Lead, Climate and Nature, Indigenous Peoples

Johanna joined ILC in June 2022 as its new Climate and Nature lead. She also serves as ILC's focal point for Indigenous Peoples' members organisations. 

Before joining ILC she spent most of her 20 years career working on the interface between the environment and human rights. Within that time, she helped set up Natural Justice, now one of the leading environmental justice organizations on the African continent and served as its first Executive Director. Beyond her time at Natural Justice, Johanna spent a couple of years advising the philanthropic sector, including the Open Society Foundations and ClimateWorks Foundation, with a focus on different aspects of climate change, as well as the GEF Small Grants Program on Access and Benefit Sharing and Biotrade. Johanna sits on the Board of Global Canopy, a data-driven not for profit targeting the market forces driving deforestation. 

Johanna has a BA Hons in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a PhD in Law from Queen Mary College, University of London. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three children.