I am originally from Slovakia but did both of my degrees in the UK. I love insects and tropical rainforests (there is the biggest diversity of them there!). I worked for the Natural History Museum in London for a few years in their beetle collections and did insect-collecting expeditions to Africa and Borneo but then realised taxonomy isn't my path and I wanted to get back to practical conservation. I then worked for a charity SEED Madagascar for a year as their research coordinator in Madagascar. Then back in the UK, I did shorter jobs for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and The Butterfly Conservation, mostly working on projects concerning conservation of rare species. 

In terms of the training outcomes:

• I did a project development post in the past but this was for a specific funder so I would be interested to learn about wider principles and how these can be applied to different projects, in different countries and of different length
• I would eventually like to transition to tropical conservation work so I am also hoping this training will help me to do so and will make my CV stronger
• my current project was quite badly designed so I would be curious to know whether there are any 'quick fixes' in already running projects