Leah Winstead
IT department Head / Illegal Wildlife Trafficking Coordinator, Project Neofelis / Tour Operator Guide, U.S. Navy / S.P.E.C.I.E.S./ San Diego Zoo Global
Based in the UK. Passion for wildlife stems from living abroad and global travel to many national parks and protected areas in my youth and early adulthood.
Degree qualifications in agricultural economics/rural resources/environmental policy.
Worked in environmental consultancy projects and waste management (reduction, reuse, recycling) collaboration, campaigns, education and service.
Volunteered part time 2010-2019 for wildlife charities (education/interpretation) and a national park (species surveys and water quality monitoring).
Refreshed knowledge of ecology through online introductory course 2014. Completed certificate in ecological consultancy 2020 under lockdown and gained qualifying membership of CIEEM.
Now wanting to mould and formalise project management experience in the wildlife conservation arena (while still in lockdown!) Feel the combination of skills and experience means I have a useful and valuable contribution to make towards improving the UK's biodiversity and state of nature, which has taken a big hit in the last decade.
Would like to do this in a paid capacity, but definitely in a volunteer role if that's all I can find to start with! Have already started making a contribution.
Founder President of WildRoots-India, an organization for Climate, Environmental, Biodiversity Awareness & Conservation Education, based in Guwahati, Assam, India. Recipient of the National Green Mentor Award, Govt. of India and Global Teacher Accreditation from the British Council & Cambridge Education Foundation. As a Nationally recognised illustrator & designer, I primarily use Art and Design to connect the youth and communities to activities and programmes related to environmental protection, climate change mitigation and conservation.
Passionate about the intersection of animal health, human health, and environmental health. Interested in the use of technology to advance our understanding of zoonotic diseases, wildlife conservation, and the One Health approach
I am passionate to conserve wild life. preserve what is left and sustain the future. I may bring value with my transformational work for the last 30 years in IT.
I have been a transformation coach in software and business industry for almost 20 years, my expertise is to help companies finding their obstacles and transform their ways of working into a collaborative, respectful, integration of diversity and human centric culture. I have been coaching to executives, managers, to software developers in shifting their mindset towards how to work with each other, while adopting new lean and agile practices and mindsets. I often serve as a strategist to the executive in how to make these cultural changes into reality and build a path to for implement the changes.
Most my agile transformations in IT in many companies across different industries were in complex domains (see Cynefin framework), where cause and effect can only be deduced in retrospect, and there are no right answers. These transformations are cultural and thinking mindset shifts, requires human behavioral changes. The solutions often required experimentation and redefining solutions based on introspections and continuous feedbacks.
The magnitude of the transformation ranges from 4000 to 40,000 people in the organization.
I believe and proven I have the skillset to:
help people looking at the problem from a different perspective
use Lean Startup and experimentation for creating effective conservation solutions
facilitate people with conflicting views to come to a common solution
design a strategy to change the culture
define a path to reach the end goal
Senior third sector manager with more than twenty years’ experience in international wildlife conservation, 15 of which in a management and leadership role. My focus has been on driving individual capacity development programmes (conservation leadership, facilitation etc.), institutional capacity building of NGOs, multi-stakeholder collaborations, conservation education and conservation programme development.
I am a conservation enthusiast with a bias for wildlife fauna. I intend to specialize in project management. I am also looking for more opportunities in conservation all over the world, especially in the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, and Tanzania.