Jury 2010

Helmy Abouleish - Graduate of Faculty of Commerce, Major in Business Administration of Cairo University and Marketing Diploma of American University in Cairo - is deeply involved in the development of SEKEM - an initiative started 1977 in the Egyptian desert striving for sustainable development in the fields of economy, culture and social/political life. He is the Managing Director of SEKEM Holding that consists of eight companies (SEKEM for Land Reclamation, Libra, Mizan, Lotus, Atos, Naturetex, Hator, Isis), which cover the fields of biodynamic agriculture cultivation, production of phyto-pharmaceuticals, organic textiles and foodstuff, with a capacity of 2000 people.

Since 2004 Helmy Abouleish is Founder & Chairman of the Egyptian National Competitiveness Council (ENCC) and since 2007 he is Founder & Chairman of Ecotec (Ecological Technologies). From May 2005 until July 2006, he has been appointed as the Executive Director of the Industrial Modernisation Centre (IMC). Furthermore, he was Chairman of the Egyptian Junior Business Association (EJB) from June 2004 to June 2006.

Helmy Abouleish is a member of the Egyptian Delegation to the UNFCCC negotiations on Climate Change of the World Future Council. A renowned leader of sustainable change in the Arab world, he is heading several organizations and is driving manifold initiatives for organic agriculture, corporate sustainability, national and global sustainable development.

Leila Akahloun is the Integrator for Africa Programs of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an international development organization that identifies and invests in social entrepreneurs known as Ashoka Fellows. She has 10 years experience in high net worth fundraising, program management, as well as design and implementation of organizational strategy. Her work with Ashoka is at the cutting edge of a dramatic transformation in social development whereby she is helping leading social entrepreneurs who are advancing the fields of health, education, the environment, human rights, women’s empowerment and economic development establish themselves as a powerful force in improving lives on the African continent. Leila holds an undergraduate degree in International Politics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and an MA degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago.

Ms. Nancy Chege is currently the National Coordinator of the Kenya GEF Small Grants Programme (GEF-SGP) of UNDP; a position she has held since 2006. Prior to joining the team at the GEF SGP, Nancy worked for a range of environmental organizations in the US and in Kenya; these include the Worldwatch Institute - WWI (US), The African Wildlife Foundation (US) the Green Belt Movement - GBM (Kenya) and the National Council of NGOs (Kenya). While at Worlwatch, Nancy published a few articles which were featured in the various WWI publications, and while at the GBM, she was fortunate to have been mentored by Prof. Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Laureate. Nancy studied at Moravian college in Pennsylvania where she obtained a Bachelors degree in Biology and later obtained a Masters degree in Environmental Management at Duke University in North Carolina.

Elisea “Bebet” G. Gozun, is the former Secretary (Minister) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines. In 2007, she was recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the Champion of the Earth for Asia and the Pacific (together with Al Gore who was named the Champion of the Earth for North America).

An activist who is involved with many environmental NGOs, she has served as a consultant on environmental management and urban development to the World Bank, ADB, USAID, UN Habitat, UNDP and other development partners. She now serves as Consultant for the World Bank Institute’s Carbon Finance Capacity Building for Emerging Megacities in the South, the World Bank’s Credit Rating Project in the Philippines. She is the Project Director of the Cities Alliance-supported City Development Strategy (CDS) project in the Philippines (which guides the 58 cities on their path to sustainable development to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of all stakeholders).  She is also a consultant of the Environmental Governance component of the USAID-supported ECO-Asia project for Asia (which covers 12 countries in Asia).

In the region, she chairs the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Partnership Council (CAI-Asia); is a Board Member of the Environment and Economics Programme for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA); and, is a member of the Advisory Committee of the ADB and GTZ-assisted City Development Initiatives in Asia (CDIA).

In the Philippines, she chairs the Earth Day Network Philippines, the Earth Council Asia Pacific Philippines and the Philippine Council for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Inc. (which serves as the secretariat for the ecolabeling program in the country). She also serves as the Vice President of the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines (SWAPP) and the Partnership for Clean Air (PCA); Director of the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE); Board of Trustees of the Philippine Tropical Forest Conservation Foundation; and, member of the Sdvisory Board of the WWF-Philippines.  She was also designated as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Supreme Court (SC) to oversee the implementation of the SC decision on the clean up of Manila Bay.

She is the Program Director of the Green Kalinga program of Gawad Kalinga.  It aims to bring the poor out of extreme poverty by providing land for the landless, home for the homeless and food on the table while ensuring that their communities live in harmony with nature, consume responsibly and do not degrade the environment.

She is the proud mother of 2 - Karla and Jose Antonio.

Paul Laird joined Earthwatch Institute (Europe) in November 2005 and works with Earthwatch’s corporate partners in the agriculture and forestry sectors, managing programmes with British American Tobacco and Syngenta in particular. As part of Earthwatch’s increasing focus on supporting organisational change in partner companies, these programmes raise awareness of the impacts and dependence of agricultural industries on biodiversity ecosystems, and build capacity to address those issues. Previously he worked with Sheffield Wildlife Trust, Living Earth Foundation, SOS Sahel International, the Kenyan Forest Department and the Forestry Commission.

Paul is a forester with an MSc in Environmental Management (London University, Distinction, 1995).  He has more than twenty years’ experience of managing forestry, agricultural and rural development projects in Africa, mainly with communities in challenging arid environments.  Projects and local organisations that he established in Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya continue to thrive and strengthen local capacity and resilience. The main focus of his career has been on sustainable natural resource management as a key strategy for rural livelihoods.

Richard is a partner in the London office of the law firm Hogan Lovells and is a member of their corporate finance group.  Richard has practised law for almost 20 years and has extensive experience in corporate finance, domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, demergers, joint ventures and general corporate advisory work. He has worked on a very broad range of transactions in a wide variety of jurisdictions, particularly in the financial institutions, life sciences and industrials sectors and clients have included major international banks, insurers, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, automotive and consumer goods manufacturers. Richard also regularly advises on corporate governance issues and often speaks at conferences and seminars on the topic.

Alejandro Litovsky is the Director of the Volans Innovation Lab, at Volans Ventures in London. He works with business, investors, governments and entrepreneurs in developing and scaling solutions to social, environmental and governance challenges. He has led the design and implementation of collaborative innovation projects for over ten years in countries like Tanzania, Ecuador, India, Philippines, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Indonesia. He is an advisor to the Tällberg Foundation in Sweden, and from 2004 to 2008 was Senior Advisor to AccountAbility in London, where he helped create the Collaborative Governance program and advised investors such as the World Bank, the Shell Foundation, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation on collaborative innovation strategies to increase their impact. In 2004 he was awarded the Hobhouse Memorial Prize by the London School of Economics where he obtained a MSc in Political Sociology. During this period he worked with the Shell International Future Scenarios team in London. Prior to 2003 he was an investment manager for the AVINA Foundation in Latin America based out of Buenos Aires. He holds a BA in International Relations from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, where he was awarded the gold medal in 1999 for his work on the political economy of the collapse of Argentine fisheries in the 1990’s. He has been recently awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Society of the Arts in the United Kingdom for his contribution to the advancement of social innovation.

Brian Milder, Director of Strategy & Innovation at Root Capital, coordinates organizational strategy and develops new markets and financial products for expanding Root Capital’s investment fund for small and growing rural businesses in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, he served as Boston Site Director for Project HEALTH, a national nonprofit organization that connects low-income families to the resources they need to be healthy. He also worked in Chile as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT), which operates a venture fund to incubate sustainable social enterprises. Mr. Milder holds a B.A. in social studies magna cum laude from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Recent publications include case studies on food security in Sub-Saharan Africa and horticulture supply chains linking East African producers to European supermarkets for Harvard Business School, an article on value chain finance in the journal Enterprise Development and Microfinance, and a chapter on finance for ecotourism businesses in the Galapagos Islands for the forthcoming book Conservation Capital in the Americas. He is fluent in Spanish and is on the Board of Directors of Patagonia Sur Foundation and the Advisory Board for Rooted Foods.

Mr Nketsia-Tabiri is the Regional Manager of E+Co Africa, an organisation which aims to stimulate longterm, institutionalized channels of investment in environmentally superior forms of energy production and use in developing countries. As the Chief Investment Officer, he oversees the investment and portfolio management of E+Co Africa’s operations in nine countries across Africa. His responsibilities involve developing overall strategic design, planning, as well as strategic partnerships for the sustainable extension of clean energy access in Africa.

He is an inaugural member of the Catto Fellowship Program of the Aspen Institute. Mr Nketsia-Tabiri holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Mechanical Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and a Master of Science in Corporate and International Finance from the University of Durham Business School. He previously worked as the senior project manager for KITE, a Ghanaian organization engaged in energy access policy and programs, where he was founding project officer of the African Rural Energy Enterprise Development (AREED) initiative.

Kirsten has a Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Studies from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and Masters in Forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She works with the Development Marketplace, a competitive grant program that identifies and funds innovative, early stage development projects with high potential for development impact and replication. The program is administered by the World Bank Institute and funded by various partners.

She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin where she was posted to an International Institute of Tropical Agriculture station responsible for working with farmers to incorporate trees into their agricultural systems. She has also worked with a number of USAID contractors and completed long-term assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her technical interests include community based natural resource management, eco-agriculture, agroforestry, communications and monitoring & evaluation. Kirsten enjoys thinking about patterns in nature and studying farming systems from around the world.

Sarah Timpson currently serves as Senior Adviser to UNDP on Community-based Initiatives, working with several UNDP programmes, which support community action, including the Community Water Initiative and the Equator Initiative, where she chairs the Technical Advisory Committee. Prior to this, she managed the UNDP/Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme (SGP). She has also served as a consultant in the evaluation of Conservation International’s Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (CEPF) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Global Conservation Fund (GCF).

In the course of a long career with UNDP, Ms Timpson has been a leader and manager of UNDP efforts to reorient its policies and programmes to focus on people-centred development, environmental sustainability, participation and equity. She has managed UNDP offices in developing countries and served in senior policy-making positions at UNDP headquarters, including as head of the Social Development Division and Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Development Policy, and established the NGO Division, spearheading UNDP’s outreach to civil society, as well as the interregional programme for the Promotion of the Role of Women in Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation (PROWWESS). Ms Timpson is a member of the Board of the South North Development Initiative and of the Global Rainwater Harvesting Collective, and has served as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of RARE Conservation.