Jason Cole is a program officer with the Andes-Amazon Initiative.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Jason worked for five years with Conservation International's Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund serving as the monitoring and evaluation director and then as the South America grant director. Nearly three of his five years at CI, Jason was based in Brazil where he managed grant portfolios for the Atlantic Forest region of Brazil, in addition to portfolios covering the Andean countries of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Before this he co-founded DevWorks International, a consulting firm specializing in project design and monitoring and evaluation, where he worked mainly on World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank projects in Africa and Latin America. Jason began his international development work by managing emergency relief projects in Angola under several of the UN peace processes through the mid-90s.
Jason received a B.A. in Economics from Earlham College and spent a year at the London School of Economics. He also earned a M.A. in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.
Eric Jacobson, Program Associate
Paul E. Little is a program officer for the Foundation’s Andes-Amazon Initiative.
Before joining the Foundation, Paul taught in the Anthropology Department at the University of Brasilia, and has also taught at the University of Azuay and the University of Cuenca, in Ecuador. In 2000, he occupied the Elena Amos Latin American Eminent Scholar Chair for the Center for International Education at Columbus State University, Georgia. Most recently, his research has focused on the social and environmental history of Ecuadorian and Brazilian Amazonia. Paul has also studied Indigenous and mestizo societies of the Ecuadorian Andes, and has extensive knowledge of the Lakota (Sioux) peoples of the Great Plains through residence and research on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. He has wide-ranging experience in public policy and research to support sustainable development and environmental conservation. Paul served as a voting member of the Brazilian Federal Advisory Council on Traditional Knowledge, a member of the National Steering Committee for the World Bank/Global Environmental Facility’s Small Grants Program, and a member of the Board of Directors for the International Institute of Education of Brazil. He has written and edited numerous scholarly articles and books, and has organized several events in scientific congresses. His awards include an Honorable Mention for the Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira Prize for Social Science Research from the University of Brasilia, Brazil (2006), Scholarship for Research Projects in Ecology and Society from the Brazilian Anthropological Association/Ford Foundation (1994), and a scholarship award for Doctoral Research Design from the National Association for Graduate Research in the Social Sciences (1994). Paul is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has a working knowledge of German, Lakota, and Quichua.
Paul holds dual Ph.D.s in Anthropology from the University of Brasilia and in Latin American Studies from the Latin American Graduate School of Social Sciences. He has a M.S. in Education from Black Hills State College in Spearfish, South Dakota, and a B.A.in Anthropology from Kalamazoo College in Michigan.
Georgia Pessoa joined Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as a program officer in March 2007.
She was previously the legal advisory and compliance coordinator in WWF-Brazil, where she coordinated a working team called “Ecological IT – Nature Deserves This Stimulus” searching for fiscal incentives or benefits from Income Tax (IT) to help national environmental projects. Georgia also coordinated the environmental policies of Audit and Environmental Secretariat of Ceará State in Brazil. Her first contact with the environmental field was while she worked at Funbio as a legal advisory.
She has a Bachelor in Law (UNIFOR – University of Fortaleza - CE), a M.B.A. on Economical and Private Company Law (FGV - Fundação Getúlio Vargas Rio de Janeiro – RJ), a post graduation course Latu Sensu on Intellectual Property Rights (PUC - RJ - Pontifical Catholic University – RJ) and a Master Degree on Environment Management (CEFET- CE – Federal Center of Technological Education in Ceará - Brazil).
Kirsten Silvius is a program officer for the Andes-Amazon Initiative.
Born and raised in Venezuela, Kirsten completed her higher education in the United States. She received a B.A. degree in Biology and Romance Languages from Bowdoin College, Maine, and both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Zoology Department at the University of Florida. Trained as a terrestrial ecologist, her research has focused both on plant-animal interactions and on wildlife use and management by local and indigenous peoples. She has studied a diversity of animal species in Venezuela and Brazil, including agoutis, parrots, peccaries, beetles, and parasitic wasps, and has worked on wildlife management issues with the Xavante, Yanomami and Macuxi people of Brazil and Guyana.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Kirsten was a research specialist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Environmental Center, where she gained experience with watershed management issues and environmental impact regulations. Earlier she held adjunct professor positions and taught ecology courses at Florida Atlantic University and the State University of New York's School of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Ana Cristina Villegas is a program officer for the Andes-Amazon Initiative.
Ana grew up in Medellin, Colombia, and attended the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri - St, Louis.
Ana’s research has included the eco-physiological response of plants to changes in rainfall and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, plant population demography, and the influence of animal-plant interactions on forest regeneration. For four years she was an adjunct faculty with Duke University working with undergraduate education programs with the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) in Costa Rica.
Ana also was a diplomacy fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) working at the US Department of State in the Office of Ecology and Terrestrial Conservation on US policy impacting biodiversity, conservation, and forest issues, particularly in the context of international conventions (e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity, World Intellectual Property Organization and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).