Who We Are
Staff contacts and bios
Megan Block
Tel: (202) 495-4194
E-mail: megan.block@wwfus.org
Megan Block is a Senior Administrative Assistant for WWF's Policy department and the MPO. She has also worked as an Administrative Assistant in the Conservation Science and Development departments at WWF. Megan is interested in international and domestic water and land use issues, ecosystem services and infrastructure development. She received her BA from Washington College in English and Political Science and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Environmental Resource Policy at George Washington University.
Leo Bottrill
E-mail: leo.bottrill@wwfus.org
Leo Bottrill is a program officer for WWF, focusing on infrastructure development. He is responsible for developing a strategy for addressing potential environmental and social impacts of major infrastructure projects in priority ecoregions. Prior to joining the MPO, he spent 4 years working in Vietnam on various projects assessing the impacts of infrastructure upon protected areas and developing programs to engage local stakeholders in biodiversity conservation. Leo holds a Masters in Geography from the University of St. Andrews and a Masters of Science in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London.
Owen Cylke
E-mail: owen.cylke@wwfus.org
Owen Cylke is a Senior Fellow with WWF and has been with the MPO for over eight years, serving most recently as its director. Prior to joining WWF, he was engaged as a senior policy advisor with the Tata Energy Research Institute, National Environmental Policy Institute and Winrock International. Earlier he served as president of the Association of Big Eight Universities, a consortium of mid-west research universities. Earlier, Owen served as a senior officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over a twenty-five year career there, he served as deputy assistant administrator for Food and Voluntary Assistance, director of the U.S. Economic Assistance Mission to India and deputy director in Afghanistan and Egypt. He retired in 1989 with the rank of Career Minister. Owen is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale Law School. He served in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Haile Selassie I University, Faculty of Law.
Sarah Davidson
E-mail: sarah.davidson@wwfus.org
Sarah Davidson is a Senior Program Officer for WWF. Her work examines how communities make decisions regarding the use of natural resources, within the context of the larger political and economic forces in which those decisions are made. Her programmatic portfolio is split between developing a partnership with CARE to promote the integration of conservation and development into both institutions’ program planning, and developing projects in Africa that model institutional and policy arrangements necessary to align climate interventions with the more traditional development and environment agendas. She has published and consulted on international forestry and certification issues, smart growth and rural planning, and agriculture and payments for ecosystem services. Sarah holds a B.A. from Smith College and a Master's in Environmental Science from Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Science.
Simon Dietrich
E-mail: simon.dietrich@wwfus.org
Simon Dietrich is a Carlo-Schmid-Fellow for WWF, focusing on structural transformation and green economy issues. His position is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service and the German National Academic Foundation. Prior to joining the MPO, he worked for the German Development Service in Togo and for a development consulting firm in Berlin. Simon holds a joint bachelor's degree in Applied Political Science from Freiburg University and Sciences Po Aix and will soon complete his Master in International Relations and Economics at Freiburg University and Sciences Po Aix.
Jonathan Haskett
Jonathan Haskett is a scientific advisor and climate change consultant for WWF, focusing on the nexus of land use climate change mitigation, adaptation and poverty reduction in the developing world. His work spans the creation of land use carbon projects, the development of landscape carbon measurement methodologies, and climate change policy at the domestic and international levels. Jonathan holds a Ph.D. in soil science from the University of Minnesota and has done post-doctoral research on the effect of climate change on agriculture with USDA-ARS. He helped in the development of the long-term acquisition plan for the Landsat-7 satellite while at the University of Maryland. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador (2002-2005) Jonathan worked with indigenous communities on soil conservation, agroforestry and mapping of the landscape carbon resource. Since 2007 he has been working with the World Wildlife Fund, the World Agroforestry Centre, and other development and conservation organizations.
Gabriella Richardson-Temm
E-mail: gabriella.richardson-temm@wwfus.org
Gabriella Richardson-Temm is the Director of WWF’s Macroeconomics for Sustainable Development Office (MPO). Throughout her career Gabriella has been focused on the interplay between development and the environment, primarily in Africa. She has spearheaded efforts to establish the multi-partner Rural Futures Initiative in collaboration with the WWF Africa Madagascar Program. Gabriella holds Masters degrees in both Applied Sociology and Development Economics from the University of Lund, Sweden. She spent several years affiliated to Universities in Botswana and Zimbabwe, leading research studies and fieldwork on rural livelihoods and natural resource management. Subsequently she joined the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and was seconded to IUCN to help build the nascent Social Policy Program in Switzerland. After several years in Gland helping to grow the program and mainstream social issues and approaches across IUCN’s field projects, she left to lead the IUCN Zambia Country Office as Director. In Zambia, she spent time building strong partnerships across the government, development agencies and civil society organizations to implement lasting public policy change.
