Jennifer Palmer is an impassioned environmental entrepreneur, wildlife biologist, global educator, public speaker, and intrepid lover of nature. She explores the world to find creative solutions to our most pressing conservation conundrums and aims to create a paradigm shift in how we connect to nature and co-exist in harmony. Her work has led her to become a trusted advisor to nonprofits, governments, academic institutions, foundations, film producers and business leaders around the world. As founder of Women for Wildlife, she has inspired an international movement to conserve wildlife, unite women and empower communities. Jennifer's career reflects a unique blend of international travel and wildlife conservation/research in over 45 countries, including regions such as SE Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. Through her heartfelt connection to nature, she brings people together with compassion to make a difference in their world.

I'm an expert in environmental governance and social forestry, with long experience as a project manager for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Cameroon. I am particularly interested in policies and social issues relating to the forestry sector. For a long time, I worked on supporting community forests towards sustainable management to improve their livelihood conditions. More recently, I've been working on forest landscape restoraion projects and supporting communal forests management. I have been involved in analysing the political, legal and governance context of projects, the most recently was the Restoration Initiative project in Cameroon. I am also a guest member of the FSC standard development group in the Republic of Cameroon, and am contributing to the process of partially revising the national standard to include specific features to non-timber forest products. My experience in the field of community forest management in Cameroon led me to take part in the training and testing programme for the Economic Viability Tool (EVT) for improving community forest management in Central Africa. I am about to start a postgraduate research on the success factors of community based conservation in the Congo Basin with Laval University. My ambition is to support the interests and needs of communities and collectivities in the context of forest management and specifically conservation, and produice advance knowledge of the social dynamics of the environment and the better ways to envolve communities in biodiversity conservation.

I'm currently a PhD student in Geography and the Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society. My research is focused on the governance of landscape restoration in Africa. Prior to that, I worked with the Ghana Wildlife Society as the Development and Policy Manager where I provide leadership in conservation education, campaigns and Policy advocacy, and communication. I also support in fundraising, project monitoring and partnerships. 

I lead the Institutional Fundraising Team at ZSL, working with colleagues across our Science, Conservation and Zoo directorates to raise grants from charitable trusts and foundations, lottery, statutory and bi/multi-lateral funders.   I've been at ZSL since 2018 but have been working in fundraising for the NfPs since 2007.  Relationship and grants fundraising are my specialisms but I have also managed RG and Corporate fundraising functions.  

Conservation scientist fascinating by all things nature. I have a particular interest in a multidisciplinary data science / machine learning approach to conservation.