Tapas Ranjan Chakraborty has been working in the field of climate change and natural resource management for the last 20 years, focusing on community resilience, governance, technology transfer, disaster risk reduction, climate action, biodiversity conservation, community rights, and ecosystem management. Currently Tapas is the Senior Programme Manager of the Climate Change Programme of BRAC. Previously, he worked with leading environmental organizations and think tanks including Oxfam, Sustainable Development Resource Center, Bangladesh POUSH, Center for Natural Resource Management, and the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies. Tapas has experience in community mobilization, wetland management, and environmental education. He was the first country coordinator for the Asia Youth Environment Network Youth Programme and was a member of the group that started the ‘Know Risk No Risk’ movement of disaster awareness in Bangladesh. Tapas has developed more than 50 mass-awareness materials on climate change and is skilled in policy influence. Bridging the gap between science and policy is his passion. He holds a Masters in Zoology/Animal Biology from Jahangirnagar University. 

Dr. Samuel Myers studies the human health impacts of accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, a field recently dubbed Planetary Health. He is a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance. Sam received his BA from Harvard College, MD from Yale University School of Medicine, and MPH from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He performed his internal medicine residency at UCSF and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. As the Director of the Planetary Health Alliance, Sam oversees a multi-institutional effort focused on understanding and quantifying the human health impacts of disrupting Earth’s natural systems and translating that understanding into resource management decisions globally. Dr. Myers served as a Commissioner on the Lancet-Rockefeller Foundation Commission on Planetary Health and a member of the Lead Expert Group of the Global Panel on Agriculture, Food Systems, and Nutrition. He is the co-editor with Howard Frumkin of Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves.

Dr. Ndola Prata is a public health physician and medical demographer from Angola. She earned her medical degree from the University of Angola and a MS in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Ndola began her career practicing medicine in Angola for 10 years, and served as Head of the Social Statistics Department at the National Institute of Statistics of Angola. Her research, which is based in sub-Saharan Africa, focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions that maximize distribution and financing mechanisms to increase access and utilization of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, particularly for underserved populations. Her projects investigate strategies for harnessing existing resources on human capacity and health care infrastructure while gathering evidence for setting priorities on national health agendas. Ndola is the Fred H. Bixby Endowed Chair in Population and Family Planning and a Professor of Maternal and Child Health at UC-Berkeley, where she teaches courses. Ndola has conducted research and published on topics related to family planning, financing and ability to pay for SRH programs, adolescent SRH and agency, maternal health, gender, the use of synthetic prostaglandins in obstetrics, and women’s empowerment, fertility and family planning. She is the gender lead for One Health Next Generation.

Dr. Monica Jain is a development economist with more than twenty years of experience in the area of evidence-informed policies. Her research focuses on poverty and development issues, especially nutrition and health. At 3ie, Monica manages a global portfolio of policy-relevant evaluations focused on immunization and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) informed sectors like environment, infrastructure, governance, and public finance. She is a member of an international WHO working group that is tasked with developing guidance and tools to measure the drivers of vaccination uptake. She is also part of the Suvita advisory board. Before joining 3ie, Monica worked at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC and the World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit in New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Economics from University of California, Riverside and a MPhil and Masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, India.

Dr. Mohamed Bakarr is currently Lead Environmental Specialist in the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Secretariat located at the World Bank in Washington, DC. Prior to joining the GEF, Mohamed was Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International (CI), where he led a team of over 60 scientists and professionals engaged in high quality research to support global biodiversity conservation efforts by CI and partners. Mohamed also served for four years as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Assistant Director General at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) based in Nairobi, Kenya. Mohamed has expertise in a broad range of issues related to the tropics, but focuses mainly on linkages among biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and human livelihoods in the African rainforest regions. Mohamed obtained his MS (1992) and PhD (1997) degrees in Tropical Biology from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, while on a USAID funded African Graduate Fellowship, and earned a BS in Biological Sciences at Njala University, Sierra Leone.