Team

James Walsh – Project Director

Puri Canals – Technical Director and Networks Twinning Coordinator

Jean-Jacques Goussard – Coastal Resilience Twinning Coordinator, Scoping Study Coordinator

Francis Staub – Marine Mammals Twinning Coordinator
Francis started his career working for the French Ministry of Environment, then the World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C. at the Environment Department before becoming a consultant. Based in London since 2012, he founded Blue Pangolin Consulting (www.blue-pangolin.net), a consultancy company working towards the conservation and sustainable use of marine, coastal and terrestrial resources. Francis also has a strong interest in Marine Protected Areas and developed several tools to evaluate their effectiveness. For the last 20 years, Francis has been involved in the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI). He acted as strategic advisor to most of the governments who have chaired ICRI (USA, France, Australia, Japan among others). He is currently ICRI’s global coordinator on behalf of the governments of Monaco, Australia and Indonesia. He is also a member of the Steering committee of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) and a strategic advisor to the French Coral Reef Initiative.

Veda Santiaji – South East Asia Expert

Charles Besancon – Conflict Resolution
Charles has degrees in both Social Anthropology and in Forestry, with specialization in protected areas planning. He has 27 years of professional experience working for the United Nations and other international organizations and has worked and/or travelled in 65 countries. He has wide experience in conflict resolution as well as facilitating transboundary collaboration agreements.
As a staff member of the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and head of the LifeWeb Initiative, he facilitated negotiations among delegates to the Convention and between donors and recipient countries in the context of resource mobilisation. He is a co-author of the book, “Transboundary Conservation: A new Paradigm for Protected Areas” and has published numerous other professional publications on the topic of peace parks.
He is the former Co-Chair of the IUCN Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group (2003-2008) and now serves as Senior Advisor to this group. Charles has worked throughout South East Asia. These countries include Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia. Most of his work in this region was related to official Convention on Biological Diversity meetings including capacity building workshops, field visits to protected areas related to finance assistance, and conference participation.

Katharine Mill – Communication

Klaas Jan Teule – South East Asia
Klaas has lived and worked for WWF in Indonesia since 1998. He has managed several field conservation programs in Eastern Indonesia before becoming the program and conservation director for WWF Indonesia. In this role Klaas has developed and overseen the implementation of several strategic and business plans of WWF Indonesia and helped develop the organization from a project-based organization into the largest conservation organization in Indonesia with an annual turnover of approximately 25 million USD, currently over 400 staff in more than 30 offices throughout Indonesia. Klaas was a key member to the development of the regional initiatives Coral Triangle and Heart of Borneo recognizing the needs to work across borders to have conservation impact at scale while fully benefitting from the global WWF network to link policy makers, business and experts to its strategies.
Klaas has supervised the development of WWF Indonesia’s marine program to become one of the largest marine teams in the WWF network. He has led numerous successful fundraising efforts that linked on-the-ground conservation efforts with foreign donor agendas. In his most recent functions as senior advisor to WWF Indonesia, he has continued in a strategic fundraising and partnership development role as well as coaching and mentoring senior staff in WWF Indonesia to become effective and confident leaders in their respective fields

Bárbara Casado – Communication and Events

Hoai-Huong Doan – Financial Manager
Huong, Project Manager of the Department of Rural Development and Environment, has been a GOPA staff member since 2009, working until 04/2019 as Finance and Contract Manager and since 05/2019 as Project Manager.
She is well-acquainted with EU procedures and regulations. She has gained broad international experience in the administration of a large number of complex EC-funded and other donor-funded programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Filip Forster – Project Manager
Filip holds a master’s degree in Environmental and Resource Management, as well as a master’s degree in Sociology of Development and Security. He started working for GOPA Consultants in January 2015. Since then, he has progressed from intern, to business support manager, and finally to his current position as a project manager in the Rural Development and Environment department, in which he is primarily responsible for projects concerning climate change and marine and coastal zone management.