Keeping Wildlife in the Wild
The U.S. Consulate Challenge
Participate multiple times!
Teams of
2 - 4 people
PARTNERS
SPEAKERS
Brian Gonzales
Brian Gonzales is the Head of Protection of Endangered Species at WWF-Hong Kong.He has over 18 years of project and development technical assistance management, conservation, and enforcement policy, and program monitoring and evaluation.
Recently based in Bangkok, Thailand for 13 years, he assumed leadership roles in multiple USAID-funded projects implemented by the IUCN/TRAFFIC and Freeland, working across Southeast Asia designed to increase institutional and policy responses to counter-wildlife trafficking. Prior to that, he worked for the Asian Development Bank, WWF and Ayala Corporation.
He holds a Master's degree in Management of Development from the University of Turin, Italy. In December 2013, Brian was named Asia 21 Young Leader of the Asia Society-Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Caroline Dingle
Dr. Caroline Dingle is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Center for Conservation Forensics in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Hong Kong.
She is the Coordinator of the Environmental Science major and teaches courses in environmental science and ecology.
Illegal wildlife trade is one of the major areas of research in her lab where she and her team combine field and laboratory studies to understand patterns of trade and to produce data to help enforcement efforts across Asia.
Dr. Mark Watson
Mark is responsible for the global sustainability portfolio of the Swire Group; a highly diversified conglomerate with 130,000 staff in businesses including aviation, property, marine, FMCG, and agriculture.
In overseeing the group’s sustainability strategy, his work focuses on reducing environmental impacts, leveraging best practices in the water, carbon, waste and energy sectors. It also involves addressing emerging sustainability issues and challenges, such as climate change risk & resilience, biodiversity and materials, and understanding social sustainability issues (e.g. diversity & inclusion and human rights).
Mark is also the Asia Pacific Chair of the United for Wildlife Transport Task Force tackling the issue of illegal wildlife trafficking. Before moving to his current role in 2015, Mark was Head of Environmental Affairs at Cathay Pacific Airways, part of the Swire Group, for 7 years.
He has now worked in the sustainability arena for over 20 years since obtaining his Ph.D. in 1995, providing strategic advice to international governments, aid agencies and multinationals on a range of environmental, economic and social issues on five continents, in corporate, consultancy and government roles.
Rebecca Wong
Rebecca completed her doctorate studies at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. Her primary research interests are in the fields of green criminology with a specific focus on illegal endangered wildlife trade in Hong Kong and Mainland China. She is also interested in criminal networks and issues of trust in the underworld. She is an associate member of the Extra Legal Governance Institute and the Elephant Research & Conservation Network, University of Oxford.
Thomas Huang
Thomas, a Cambodian born American, was educated in the US, Greater China, and Europe.
From his academic days, he was involved in numerous public speaking forums from Youth in Government to Model United Nations and Local Government. He has been invited to speak at conferences worldwide and has won numerous pitching competitions.
Recently, he has served as MC/Speaker/Mentor at Cyberport, HKBU and UC Berkeley Entrepreneurship Competitions. He mentored a team of Entrepreneurs from Oxford, Columbia, Cambridge, HKBU, and CityU helping them overcome speaking anxiety to win 1st place in a very competitive competition with established companies.
Sophie le Clue
As Director of Environment Programme with the ADM Capital Foundation, Sophie is responsible for the Foundation’s environmental investments including the identification/evaluation of projects and aligning financial investment with strategic philanthropic objectives.
In this capacity, she has a specific focus on the Foundation’s marine and wildlife trade portfolio and strategy. Her work involves the identification/evaluation of projects and aligning financial investment with strategic philanthropic objectives as well as working with beneficiaries and developing projects with respect to the Foundations environmental portfolio.
Sophie has worked for the past 28 years in the field of environmental protection and conservation, principally in the Asia Pacific region.
JUDGES
Alex Hofford
Alex Hofford is a Wildlife Campaigner for WildAid as well as an active conservation photojournalist. WildAid is an NGO that is focused exclusively on reducing demand for endangered species.
Alex has lived in Hong Kong for over two decades, using the city as a base to address the region's urgent environmental issues.
Through direct stakeholder engagement, Alex worked on an intense – but successful – public awareness campaign to secure the Hong Kong government's 2018 ivory ban and wildlife crime penalty review.
Over the years, Alex has led various marine conservation and sustainability initiatives. These include a years-long campaign to cut the supply of shark fin cargo to Hong Kong markets by working in partnership with the transport sector.
Alex is also leading a science-based campaign to encourage major restaurant groups in Hong Kong from selling shark fin soup to the public.
He is now working on the early stages of the new WildAid campaign to encourage the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) trade sector to act more sustainably by removing all endangered species from its wide range of health products.
Alex Hofford was born and raised in Cambridge in the United Kingdom and educated in London and Hong Kong.
David Olson
Royce To
Royce To is the Programme Manager (Wildlife Trade) of ADM Capital Foundation. With a background in fauna and flora conservation and a technology enthusiast, his current focus is monitoring illegal wildlife trade in Hong Kong, using data insights to expose the impact of various factors on species survival.
Wander Meijer
Wander is a senior executive in the consultancy industry with 20+ years’ business and management experience in Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. With a passion for social development and sustainability, he is involved in advisory functions for strategy, business development, and management.
His professional goals are to bring more business acumen and skills to not-for-profit organizations and at the same time, install more social awareness and CSR policies at commercial enterprises.
Wander recently worked for ADM Capital Foundation, HSH/Peninsula, Huawei, MSC, Standard Chartered Bank, Swire, TRAFFIC/WWF, UNICEF, USAID, Vitasoy and the Zoological Society of London.