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2020 Steering Committee Election
We in GYBN have a responsibility to elect new Steering Committee members to guide GYBN towards our overarching goal of preserving biodiversity globally.
If you are a member of GYBN, please get to know the Steering Committee candidates by reading their bios below, and then vote for the candidates you believe should lead GYBN into the new 2020-2030 decade at the bottom of the page. You can find the Guidelines for the GYBN Election Process here.
Prisca Daka
Country: Zimbabwe
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SC Nomination for Representative of Africa
Prisca Daka comes from Zimbabwe and she holds a master’s degree (LLM) in Animal Law from Lewis and Clark Law School (USA). She was blessed enough to explore wildlife with her family from a young age. She learned and appreciated how the outdoors can help people create connections with others and with nature. Following the first GYBN Africa capacity-building workshop in 2017, she founded a new GYBN chapter, the Zimbabwe Youth Biodiversity Network, to establish a local platform that advocates for youth participation in biodiversity issues at all levels. She aims to use her legal background to use the power of the law, advocacy, and lobbying to protect animals and biodiversity in general.
Simangele Msweli
Country: South Africa
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SC Nomination for Representative of Africa
Simangele holds a Master of Science degree in biological sciences (specializing in pollination biology) from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is the coordinator of the South African Youth Biodiversity Network, a national chapter of GYBN and serves as a registered NPO in South Africa. She currently works for WILDOCEANS as a project site coordinator of the Oceans Alive Project. Simangele has 8 years experience in the CBD process, having attended my first CBD-COP in 2012 (COP-11 in India) and has been an active volunteer of GYBN since 2016, doing policy tracking, interventions and capacity building. Within GYBN, she has contributed to policy initiatives and creating interventions at COP-13 in Mexico (2016), SBSTTA-22 in Canada (2017), COP-14 in Egypt (2018) and OEWG-1 on the Post-2020 Framework (Kenya 2019). She was also on the facilitation team in two GYBN Africa capacity-building workshops (South Africa, 2017 and Kenya, 2018) and the GYBN Europe workshop in Austria (2019).
Kevin Lunzalu
Country: Kenya
SC Nomination for Representative of Africa
Kevin Lunzalu is a wildlife biologist from Kenya with passionate interest in youth, human rights, and conservation issues. Through his work, Kevin strives to strike a balance between science and humanity, and strongly believes that communities should be at the center of the conservation agenda. Kevin is currently the country coordinator of the Kenyan Chapter of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network, a platform through which he actively engages young people at the grassroots level about innovative and sustainable solutions aimed at halting the biodiversity loss currently occurring around the globe. Kevin, a 2015 recipient of the Environmentalist of the Year Award for his community-centered conservation work, is also a two-time nominee for the the Environmental Blogger of the Year Awards (2018 and 2019). Apart from his blog, Kevin has written conservation articles for other platforms, mostly detailing the state of environmental stewardship in Africa, and linking it with economics, politics, agriculture, gender, human rights, and youth empowerment. He was one of the international jury of Judges selected for the 2019 UN Young Champions of the Earth.
Mandatiana Randrianjafinimaro
Country: Madagascar
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SC Nomination for Representative of Africa
Mandatiana is an engineer in the environment and forestry field and is educated about the biodiversity loss caused by anthropic activities. She enjoys sharing her vision to achieve sustainable biodiversity management and is motivated to discover more about fundraising, youth outreach and to build my capacity in policy and advocacy. She hopes to empower young people to speak up for their rights and the rights of future generations within the biodiversity policy area.
Brenda Izidio
Country: Brazil
SC Nomination for Representative of LAC
Brenda is Brazilian and lives on the island of São Luís, Maranhão state. She is a biologist and a master's student in biodiversity and conservation. She was coordinator of the biodiversity working group of the NGO Engajamundo from 2017 to 2019. She is currently involved with the creation and strengthening of the national chapter of GYBN in Brazil. She works with environmental education and ecosystem services in coastal areas, local communities, schools and universities. She strongly believes that young people have the power to transform and improve the reality of the places where they live and that they can do this through actions, projects and the participation of political decision-making processes. She would like to continue working to learn, build and disseminate knowledge for nature conservation in Brazil and worldwide.
Thomas McAuley-Biasi
Country: Canada
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SC Nomination for Representative of North America
Thomas McAuley-Biasi is the chair of Emerging Leaders for Biodiversity (ELB), a youth network
in the province of Ontario devoted to connecting young people who are passionate about the
environment and biodiversity, as well as connecting them with jobs and opportunities in the environmental sector. As chair, Thomas represents ELB on the Ontario Biodiversity Council, as well as on the Biodiversity Education and Awareness Network’s board. Thomas has also represented Canada’s youth with the Canadian government at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2016, and as a Canadian Youth Ambassador for World Environment Day in 2017. Thomas graduated from the University of Guelph in 2015 with a degree in Zoology, and previously spent his summers as a camp counsellor at a zoo camp. As a camp counsellor, he worked with exotic animals and children, facilitating a safe interaction between both, and educating the campers on the animals in the zoo.
Josefa Cariño Tauli
Country: Philippines
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SC Nomination for Representative of Local and Indigenous Youth
Josefa Cariño Tauli (Sefa) is an indigenous Ibaloi-Kankanaey Igorot youth from Cordillera, Philippines. She has served as co-coordinator of GYBN Southeast Asia since 2018 and has been actively advocating for indigenous peoples’ issues and meaningful and effective youth participation within and for GYBN since becoming a member. With her academic
background on biocultural diversity conservation, experience in grassroots initiatives for indigenous youth, and her advocacy work thus far on biodiversity, science-policy, and indigenous peoples rights, she has contributed significantly to informing GYBN positions especially on relevant concerns and contributions of indigenous peoples and local
communities. Given her good grasp on many relevant issues in the CBD, she has been part of the Youth delegation to a number of CBD meetings such as CBD COP14, OEWG1, WG8J11, and SBSTTA23. She is committed to taking this forward in the process of the development of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and beyond.
Darien Jones
Country: Trinidad and Tobago
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SC Nomination for Representative of LAC
Darien Jones is a Technical Officer with the National Reforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme (NRWRP), where he oversees and directs ten (10) organizations in rehabilitation and conservation work through Trinidad. He is also heavily involved in NGOs and CBOs from Protectors of the Environment (POE) and the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN), where he performs duties as a Research Officer and Project Coordinator respectively.
He has a B.Sc. in Environmental and Natural Resource Management and Agribusiness, and is currently pursuing his M.Sc. in Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development in the
Caribbean at the University of the West Indies (UWI). In 2017, Darien decided to combine his career, education and hobbies to found and lead the Eco-Titans Organization, and lead a group of NGOs in a series of five tree-planting events entitled ‘Operation Strike Back’ where he engaged the public by enlisting their help in rehabilitating areas most severely affected by the forest fires in 2019.
Kier Mitchel E. Pitogo
Country: Philippines
SC Nomination for Representative of Asia
Kier received his Bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology in 2015 before working as a Research Assistant in the Coastal Foraging Models project of the Institute of Human Origins. His flexible work schedule enabled him to co-found PaWeCan Do It! — a movement that educates the coastal communities in his region, especially the youth, about marine conservation. At 20, he served as the program co-director of the year-long marine turtle conservation education program in Southern Mindanao, funded by the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
His advocacy secured him an academic fellowship under the Environmental Leadership Institutes of the United States Department of State Foreign Exchange Programs in 2016, which was hosted by the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i. Upon returning to the Philippines, his works in marine conservation continued as he was involved in various youth leadership activities for oceans through the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) until 2018.
He is currently a MSc. Candidate in Wildlife Studies at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños, where he is serving as the project leader of a two-year research project on amphibians and reptiles in a remote mountain in the southern Philippines. He is also volunteering for the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) and helps coordinate the Philippines chapter. He is also closely following the marine and coastal biodiversity issues in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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