Our Team

Tracy provides technical and strategic advice and support to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group and the ten LIFE-AR countries and is responsible for catalysing the successful scale-up, delivery and transfer of the LIFE-AR secretariat to the LDC Group, while also stewarding the overall progress of LIFE-AR. This includes technical assistance to connect to peers, LDC partners and other sources of expertise building on their global connections across LDC governments, international partners, academia, technical experts, civil society and grassroots. 

Tracy’s wide expertise covers climate change adaptation and resilience, monitoring and evaluation for adaptation, decolonial and intersectional approaches, equitable partnerships, gender and social justice.

Annet is a climate change specialist with more than 10 years’ experience in partnerships building and strengthening to support climate action. She worked with community-based organisations, civil society, governments and regional agencies in Eastern and Central Africa, and international organisations to ensure that voices of marginalised groups are included in climate action and decision making. Annet has a strong expertise in climate change adaption mainstreaming in governments, climate risk assessment, climate justice, climate finance, and building capabilities.

Bethany Donithorn is a specialist in knowledge management and learning, with a strong focus on sustainable development, migration and climate change. She has more than 20 years’ experience working on knowledge management, sustainable development, climate change and migration with the United Nations. She supported global knowledge management initiatives with International Organization for Migration’s (IOM), Global Data Institute in Berlin and has worked as a knowledge management consultant for UN organisations. These include IOM, United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UN Habitat, UN Women and the World Bank. She has coordinated Communities of Practice, knowledge platforms and stakeholder consultations for major UN conferences, including the UN Ocean Conference, the Rio+20 Dialogues and the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on SDG 10 on reducing inequality.

As the head of governance for LIFE-AR, Binyam works towards building sustained resilience and adaptative capacity in LDCs and helps move from traditional adaptation projects to innovative, programmatic approaches.

Binyam's expertise encompasses climate diplomacy, adaptation strategy, international climate negotiation and governance, with a special emphasis on guiding LDCs through complex negotiation processes and governance challenges.

Catherine is a qualified project and programme manager with a legal background specialising in implementing strategic initiatives at scale. Her latest work involved setting up and acting as interim chief operating officer for IIED Europe, a new European organisation based in the Netherlands. She has also worked on designing and implementing organisational change at IIED and managed the data protection compliance function since 2018. Catherine is currently leading on the transition of the LIFE-AR secretariat, housed by IIED, to a new independent LIFE-AR facility.

Chantelle is a gender equality specialist with 20 years’ experience of building collaborative partnerships with civil society, governments, academia and the private sector. Her work has focused on the development of gender strategies and their implementation in policy and practice, gender-sensitive participatory research, global advocacy, knowledge management and learning. Chantelle has worked for the Commonwealth Secretariat, Conciliation Resources, University of Bath, Institute of Physics and several NGOs. Chantelle is an experienced trainer and facilitator, who has developed gender trainings in a wide range of contexts alongside the creation of communities of practice for shared learning and knowledge exchange.

Clara has a range of experience across the international development sector, working with the governments of Liberia, Malawi, The Gambia, India and Uganda, and on projects implemented in the Pacific, all focusing on improving access to climate finance.

Focusing mainly on adaptation finance, Clara also has experience working on issue linked to access to the Green Climate Fund, as well as decentralised approaches to public climate finance and the interaction between public financial management and climate finance. She has worked with NGOs, national governments, at the intergovernmental level and in the private sector.

David has a background in anthropology with a research focus on pastoralism and the drylands (East Africa), water governance, the impacts of large scale development projects (dams), and indigenous conceptions of prosperity and poverty. For LIFE-AR, he focuses on fostering and coordinating learning activities.

Eddie has an academic background in Environmental Science and Natural Resource. He began his professional career as a climate finance advisor working with the private sector and state actors in East and Southern Africa. With more than 12 years of experience in varied organisations, he brings a multi-disciplinary experience in agriculture, Renewable Energy (RE) and impact investment in emerging markets. He has a passionate for climate action and has lived experience in over 20 countries supporting investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions, climate smart agriculture (regenerative agriculture) and Disaster Risk Reduction.

Erin has six years’ experience working in international development, focusing on programme operations and project delivery. She holds a BA in Business and Management and focused her research on environmental impact reporting in the NGO sector. Erin supports the transition to the LIFE-AR Facility.

Fiona is a programme management specialist with more than 20 years of experience in the non-governmental and university sectors, focusing on international development and cooperation. She has expertise that includes project management and resourcing, financial management and reporting, donor compliance and communications. Fiona has a particular interest in relationships between organisations working in international development, the political economy of international development funding, and an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, London, UK. Before starting at the International Institute for Environment and Development in 2012, Fiona’s roles included ones at University College London, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth.

Florence has a PhD in Geography and over 17 years’ experience working on adaptation to climate change, climate resilient development and disaster management across a variety of contexts (UK, France, Australia, Africa).

Her work has focused on understanding the differentiated vulnerabilities and capacities to adapt of private actors, communities and societies and how to enhance their resilience to environmental and climatic changes. More recently, Florence has been leading work on supporting national and local governments to implement locally led climate action and climate resilient development.

She is particularly interested in the dynamics of dryland economies and societies in East and West Africa, and their adaptation challenges and opportunities. For LIFE-AR, Florence supports the Head of Delivery in overseeing the initiative implementation in country and is the country support for Burkina Faso.

Jayeola is an international development and humanitarian financial and compliance management professional with 11+ years of broad experience in financial management, budgeting, compliance, grant audit, partners management, field office support, procurement and general administration. His expertise includes designing and implementing financial and accounting systems, ensuring compliance to internal control procedures, and driving and streamlining processes in complex and multi-donor funded environments. Previously, Jayeola worked as the senior coordinator, programme finance with Rainforest Foundation UK, and also as finance manager with Banyan Global and Chemonics International in Nigeria.

Leo is a project management specialist, with experience in supporting projects with NGOs and academia.

Liam has ten years’ experience working on climate-compatible development, financing resilience and climate adaptation policy and negotiations, working in Southern Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. His expertise covers governance for climate risk and adaptive management, adaptation strategy, climate adaptation finance, including improving access mechanisms. Liam worked for seven years in UK government departments, including the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment Food and Rural affairs, supporting inclusive policy development focused on climate resilience building and embedding climate adaptation into development planning and processes.

Lilian’s role entails providing direct technical support to the LIFE-AR Front Runner Countries, in the design and implementation of national delivery mechanisms to deliver the LDC 2050 Vision for resilience.

She also supports the Interim Secretariat’s work on integrating gender and social inclusion (GESI) in LIFE-AR. Lilian has extensive expertise in participatory learning and action, decentralised climate finance approaches, climate risk and vulnerability assessments, and gender and social inclusion.

Lotshiwe is a specialist in grants, finance, risk, governance and compliance management with demonstrated history of providing technical guidance and support to project teams and partners. She possesses multi-sector expertise and capabilities in supporting different donor-funded projects and multi skillset in leadership, effective communication, project management, stakeholder management and human capital development. Before joining IIED, Lotshiwe worked for various international organisations and multiple development partners. Lotshiwe provides compliance and monitoring support to LIFE-AR stakeholders, alongside identifying opportunities for compliance improvement. She acts as the custodian of the standard operating procedures, ensuring their implementation and continuous improvement.

Maryline is a communication and a stakeholder engagement specialist, with 20 years of international experience in the field of strategic communications and advocacy campaigns. Maryline has designed and implemented communications strategies on climate change and environmental and social issues for the private sector, international NGOs, regional organisations and governments in France, Thailand, South Africa and the Caribbean.

Matt is a project management specialist, with experience as a project coordinator for the Forest and Peatland programme at the University of Edinburg. Matt holds a MSc in global environment politics and society, and a BA in international relations. Matt provides administrative, coordination and finance support to the LIFE-AR governance team.

Ranak is a passionate supporter of social and environmental causes with a particular interest in global inequalities and conservation. She specialises in project management, sustainability, budgeting, partnership management and communications. Ranak travelled and worked for five years in a variety of roles across Asia, New Zealand, Australia and South America.

Sam's work focuses on the effectiveness, governance and commercial viability of investments in climate adaptation, including integrating climate into development programming. He is an expert in adaptation finance effectiveness, value of adaptation, private investment in climate adaptation, climate-resilient livelihoods, monitoring and evaluation of climate adaptation programmes, integration of climate into development planning and decision-making, and economic valuations of climate adaptation/resilient policy.

Siân is passionate about sustainability, international collaboration and mobility and languages/linguistics. She specialises in project processes and management and administrative support. She worked in the travel and international mobility sectors before joining the non-profit sector working in operations for the National Centre for Universities and Business.

Valentine is a programme management specialist, with expertise in implementing a complex portfolio of international research and policy projects, oversight of project management, finance, logistics and administration. Valentine previously worked as the programme implementation manager at Integrity Action and as the programme officer at Rift Valley Institute. She also lived in Senegal and worked at the Embassy of France.

Wafula is a project management and programme monitoring and evaluation specialist. He has in-depth development and humanitarian aid human rights programming experience, specifically in child protection, refugee assistance and climate change/climate justice. Wafula was formerly the monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning lead of the African Activists for Climate Justice project.