Leadership & Governance

Peter joined WCN in 2017 as the Conservation Initiatives Director and brings a lifelong passion for African wildlife conservation to the organization. He has been working on and with African wildlife since 1993, when he started out as an apprentice in Save Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe. Peter went on to study at Oxford and ultimately graduated with a PhD from the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria. 

Developing an early expertise on African wild dogs, Peter went on to work on a broad array of conservation issues ranging from predator conservation, to the threats facing them and other wildlife, to wildlife ranching and community conservation, and most recently to Africa’s vast protected area network. Peter has worked in Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and brings a unique ‘big picture’ perspective to our African conservation efforts. Prior to joining WCN, Peter worked for Panthera’s Lion Program as the policy coordinator and completed some major overviews of the issues facing the conservation of lions in Africa’s protected area network. 

After 20 years in the private sector in Silicon Valley, Rebecca joined The Nature Conservancy in 2001 to pursue her life-long interest in conservation. As a Regional Director, she oversaw conservation programs in many parts of the world, from China to Peru to the western United States, and developed a deep appreciation for the importance of community-based conservation. Then as the Chief Conservation Strategies Officer she led TNC's global policy and science initiatives. She joined WCN in 2010 to contribute her experience to WCN's innovative and effective model for wildlife conservation. She is on the boards of several other conservation organizations, and in her free time, she also enjoys hiking adventures.

Paul specializes in highly threatened and endangered species, incubating conservation startups, and building leadership capacity in the environmental field. Paul oversees WCN’s Crisis and Recovery Funds Strategy, including the Lion Recovery Fund.  Prior to WCN, Paul was a director of Ewaso Lions and helped build and run the project. In addition to his work with WCN, he runs Save Pangolins, a project he co-founded to address the illegal trade of the little-known pangolin, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammal.Paul is an alum of the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program and now serves on the board. Paul holds a BSc from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources & Environment and received his Master’s from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He was raised in the Bay Area.

Dr. Colleen Begg was raised in South Africa. She earned her Master’s Degree (with distinction) assessing the translocation of problem cheetah into Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe and her PhD in Zoology on the first in-depth study of the honey badger. Colleen is a well published scientist and is also a professional photographer with articles and images published worldwide in National Geographic Magazine and Africa Geographic among others.

In 1996, Colleen joined forces with Keith Begg to start the first in depth study of the honey badger in the Kalagadi Transfrontier Park in South Africa. In 2003, Colleen and Keith, left South Africa for Mozambique and founded the independent Niassa Lion Project in the little known Niassa Reserve in Northern Mozambique where they work in collaboration with local communities and Mozambican management authority (co-management between Wildlife Conservation Society and Ministry of Tourism). 

The goals of this project are to secure lions, leopards, wild dogs and spotted hyaenas in Niassa Reserve by finding practical, community based sustainable solutions to human induced threats like unsustainable sport hunting, retaliatory killing and bushmeat snaring. In 2007, Colleen received a Rufford Innovation Award for Niassa Lion Project's lion conservation work in Niassa Reserve.

Stephanie’s two biggest passions are telling great stories and helping animals. In 2003, she was able to bring these passions together by managing communications projects for WildAid, an organization focused on ending illegal wildlife trafficking. Inspired by this experience she went on to get her M.A. in geography, studying human-wildlife interactions in marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation. Most recently, Stephanie was a Communications Officer at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where she worked on communications strategy and developed print and digital content on a variety of issues—including climate change, education, women’s empowerment and the arts. 

A published scientist, conservationist and specialist guide, Tristan is the co-founder of Ultimate Safaris Namibia. His career began guiding river safaris in South Africa before managing a renowned safari camp in Namibia, whilst studying Natural Resource Management and qualifying as both a safari and hunting (never practiced as such) guide in Namibia. Tristan spent a number of years researching sandgrouse species as well as doing the first ever research on the Black mongoose, Namibia’s only endemic carnivore, before becoming a specialist guide leading safaris throughout southern and East Africa after founding Tou Safaris in 2003. In 2008 he co-founded Ultimate Safaris, which has grown into Namibia’s premier Conservation Travel company, employing more than 100 quality full time staff.

A passionate Namibian and son of veteran Namibian anti-apartheid political journalist, Tristan’s enthusiasm for Namibia, its people and the protection of the environment is at the forefront of everything he does. He is the founder of the Conservation Travel Foundation, which now raises in excess of ZAR 2 million for conservation and rural development projects annually, and also co-founded the NATH Education Trust, which since its inception 8 years ago, has raised ZAR 5.5 million for the training of Namibian guides as well as the establishment of a blended learning platform (e-learning) for Namibian guides.

Tristan has served on the boards of the Federation of Namibian Tourism Associations, Namibian Academy for Tourism and Hospitality, Advisory Board to the Namibian University of Science and Technology Natural Resource Management department and in 2007, at age 25, served as the youngest chairperson of the Tour and Safari Association of Namibia, a position he held for two years.

Luke Hunter is the Executive Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Big Cats Program, where he helps to coordinate the strategies and activities of WCS’s conservation efforts on big cats in more than 25 countries. His doctoral and post-doctoral work assessed the effectiveness of translocating wild lions and cheetahs, and developed reintroduction protocols which have contributed to the recovery of lions in over 50 newly-restored populations. He is a founding member of Panthera and its former President & Chief Conservation Officer, leading the organization's field conservation programs, and supervising its scientific research program from 2008-2018. His chief interests are devising and scaling up solutions to retaliatory killing of large carnivores by rural communities, improving the status and management capacity of protected areas, and reducing impacts on cat populations of legal hunting. He has authored/co-authored more than 180 articles in scientific journals and popular media including for BioScience, National Geographic, New Scientist and Slate. He has written eight books including Cats of Africa: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (2006), Wild Cats of the World (2015) and Carnivores of the World (2018); and he is writing the forthcoming Princeton Encyclopedia of the Cat Family. Hunter lives just outside New York City on the urban outskirts of bobcat range in the state.

Peter joined WCN in 2017 as the Conservation Initiatives Director and brings a lifelong passion for African wildlife conservation to the organization. He has been working on and with African wildlife since 1993, when he started out as an apprentice in Save Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe. Peter went on to study at Oxford and ultimately graduated with a PhD from the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria. 

Developing an early expertise on African wild dogs, Peter went on to work on a broad array of conservation issues ranging from predator conservation, to the threats facing them and other wildlife, to wildlife ranching and community conservation, and most recently to Africa’s vast protected area network. Peter has worked in Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and brings a unique ‘big picture’ perspective to our African conservation efforts. Prior to joining WCN, Peter worked for Panthera’s Lion Program as the policy coordinator and completed some major overviews of the issues facing the conservation of lions in Africa’s protected area network. 

Nyambe Nyambe PhD, is currently the Executive Director of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area Secretariat based in Kasane, Botswana. He is a social scientist with more than 20 years’ experience of applied project and programme work in the conservation sector. He obtained his doctorate in Environment and Development from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2005. Nyambe started his career in the mid-1990s as a wetlands officer and later as a Community Wellbeing Specialist under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the Barotse floodplains, Zambia. He previously held the following positions: Programme Director (Environment & Development), Centre for Environment & Development at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Project Executant, Zambezi-Chobe Fisheries Project, Namibia Nature Foundation. Nyambe joined the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Zambia in 2008 as a Wetlands Officer and subsequently was appointed to the following positions: Project Coordinator, Conservation Manager and Country Director. 

Claudio Sillero is the Founder of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program (EWCP). He grew up on a cattle ranch in Argentina, which shaped his desire for a career in wildlife conservation. In 1985 he travelled to Kenya following his dream, and after cutting his teeth studying spotted hyaenas and rhinos he was invited by the New York Zoological Society to the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia, to unveil the mystery of the rare Ethiopian wolves. What began as an academic pursuit turned into a lifelong career, with Claudio’s work in Ethiopia spanning four decades. Claudio has been a partner of WCN since its origin, and holds a number of other positions, including Associate Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford, Chair of the IUCN Canid Specialist Group, and Chief Scientist at Born Free Foundation. He is married to Jorgelina Marino (EWCP Science Director) and has three children.

Paul specializes in highly threatened and endangered species, incubating conservation startups, and building leadership capacity in the environmental field. Paul oversees WCN’s Crisis and Recovery Funds Strategy, including the Lion Recovery Fund.  Prior to WCN, Paul was a director of Ewaso Lions and helped build and run the project. In addition to his work with WCN, he runs Save Pangolins, a project he co-founded to address the illegal trade of the little-known pangolin, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammal.Paul is an alum of the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program and now serves on the board. Paul holds a BSc from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources & Environment and received his Master’s from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He was raised in the Bay Area.