Women’s Initiative for Sustainability and Empowerment

Benedicta Amenyo is the Associate Director of Operations of the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University. Her experience spans project management, grant management, research and engagement, operations, marketing and social media management, program coordination, and monitoring & evaluation. Before joining ALU, she worked with the African Center for Economic Transformation, a think tank based in Accra, Ghana, as a project coordinator and a monitoring & evaluation analyst for four years. Benedicta’s background is in Local Economic Development. She currently leads the operations team at the School of Wildlife Conservation.

Fiesta Warinwa is a freelance consultant, having served as Director-Conservation Program at the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). She has 23 years of professional experience in conservation and development with 15 years of proven record in providing leadership at different levels in the execution of AWF’s strategy and programs in East Africa.  Fiesta is a native of South Sudan and a very strong believer in women’s empowerment and leadership growth. She believed that investing in women’s empowerment sets a direct path toward gender equality and inclusive conservation, and economic growth. Fiesta is a co-founder and Council member of Women and Environment (WE) Africa, co-founder of Conservation Alliance of Kenya, and a board member of Elsamere Trust-Kenya and South Sudan Nature Conservation Organization.

Moreangels Mbizah is the Founder and Executive Director of Wildlife Conservation Action, an organization focusing on building the capacity of local communities to protect and coexist with wildlife while improving their livelihoods. Moreangels received her Doctoral Degree in Zoology from the University of Oxford, and her work on lions was featured in a National Geographic short film, “One Woman’s Remarkable Journey to Protect Lions,” in 2018. In 2019 Moreangels was awarded a TED Fellowship and gave a TED talk, “How community-led conservation can save wildlife.” Moreangels is also a Mandela Washington Fellow and is passionate about inspiring and mentoring Africa’s next generation of conservation leaders. 

Anu is a Pediatrician and Global Public Health physician whose passion lies in mobilizing grassroots groups to uplift their communities through collective action. Her experiences working in disaster relief and under-resourced settings in India, Mozambique, Malawi, and New York showed her the specific importance of elevating women as leaders and teachers within their communities.  After serving for eight years as Director of the Global Health Education program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NYC, she left academic medicine in 2016 to consult for international NGOs on maternal and child health.  In 2018 she launched Women Together Global Inc. (www.womentogetherglobal.com), a not-for-profit focusing on the co-empowerment of women and girls through peer education and economic independence in Malawi.

Paul Thomson is the head of conservation programs at the Wildlife Conservation Network. He leads an international team that manages the $70M portfolio of Wildlife Funds, an expanding global network of partners, and a growing cadre of rising wildlife leaders. Paul first joined the WCN staff in 2018 to help create the Lion Recovery Fund. Outside of WCN, he runs Save Pangolins, which he co-founded to address the illegal trade of the little-known pangolin, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammal. Paul believes we need more leaders in the conservation field, and he serves on the boards of Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders and Kinship Conservation Fellows. 

Scott is a philanthropist and conservationist who, with his wife Megan, leads a foundation focused on preserving the animal ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was formerly a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, and the CEO/founder of IronPort Systems, an e-mail security company. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Susan (Sue) Snyman is the Director of Research at the African Leadership University’s School of Wildlife Conservation.  Having completed coursework at the University of Goteborg in Sweden, the focus of her Ph.D. research (through the University of Cape Town, School of Economics) measured the socio-economic impact of high-end ecotourism in remote, rural communities adjacent to protected areas based on over 1,800 community surveys in six southern African countries including Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Sue is currently leading a project looking at the wildlife economy across Africa. Her overall research and work focus is on promoting sustainable, diversified wildlife economies in Africa, encouraging investment in conservation and related wildlife economy activities, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing for local communities. 

Dr. Zoliswa (Zoe) Nhleko is a Senior Programs Manager in the Conservation Programs division at Wildlife Conservation Network. Zoe joined WCN in May 2022 to lead the growth of the Partner Network. She has applied conservation experience gained working on large African mammals like rhinos in South Africa. Zoe received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida with a dissertation entitled “Understanding and Responding to South Africa’s white rhino poaching crisis,” where she investigated the effects of poaching on white rhino ecology.