Leonardo Colombo Fleck

Biography

As program officer for the foundation's Conservation and Markets Initiative, Leo leads global grant-making strategies devoted to aligning market and policy incentives with conservation outcomes in the agriculture sector. He also collaborates with the Climate and Land Use Alliance.

Previously, Leo’s career as an environmental economist and conservationist spanned the biodiversity, land use and climate fields. As senior economist and Brazil program lead at Conservation Strategy Fund, Leo oversaw projects across Latin America. He was part of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity initiative (TEEB), and lectured environmental economics and corporate sustainability internationally, including at Stanford University. In 2012 Leo and his former colleagues received the MacArthur Foundation's Award for Creative and Effective Organizations.

Leo earned an M.B.A. from UNA University in Brazil, an M.S. in conservation biology from the University of Kent in England, and a BS. in biological sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Leo is also a Stanford Certified Project Manager.

Some of Leo's recent written contributions include:

• Jurisdictional sourcing: Leveraging commodity supply chains to reduce tropical deforestation at scale
• Global green value chains – Greening China’s “soft commodity” value chains
• Closing the accountability loop on commodity-driven deforestation
• The role of supply-chain initiatives in reducing deforestation
• Climate risks to Amazon agriculture suggest a rationale to conserve local ecosystems

related links

Conservation and Markets Initiative Environmental Conservation Back