WOCAN Board and Staff

Director and Ex-Officio Board Member
Jeannette D. Gurung

Jeannette Gurung is a forester and gender and development expert whose career has focused on leading organizational change for gender equality within agriculture and natural resource management organizations in Asia and Africa. She is founder and director of Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN), a global network of women and men professionals and farmers in 83 countries who are committed to increasing rural women's access to and control over resources to manage agriculture and natural resources to enhance their livelihoods and WOCAN engages in advocacy and capacity building for women's leadership through an innovative approach of partnering women farmers with professionals, for greater productivity, incomes and secure livelihoods.

Jeannette has a MSc in forestry, and a PhD in Gender and Development with a focus on organizational development and change for gender equality based on her years of experience leading gender mainstreaming at ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. She has expertise in training/capacity building, action research, gender analysis, organizational analysis, policy advocacy and network building, and has published numerous articles and books. She is active in international advocacy work within the UN Forum on Forests, the Commission for Sustainable Development, the Network of Women Agriculture Ministers and Leaders; she is on the board of directors for the CGIAR Participatory Research and Gender Analysis Program.

Coordinator - WOCAN West/Central Africa
Jane Tarh Takang

Jane Tarh Takang is a Development Professional with bias for gender equality since 1997. Jane is a Cameroonian. Graduated from the University of Yaoundé in 1990 and later trained at the Pan- African Institute for Development- West Africa in Buea, Cameroon, where she obtained a Certificate in Women in Development and Micro-Enterprise Management and later a Diploma Integrated Rural Development specializing in project planning and management in 1997.
As a child Jane had always believed in fairness. Discovering later on in life that her society found something not right with any woman who strived to compete with men, awoke in her the passion to stand up for women as well as other disadvantaged groups. This ambition was further enhanced, when as a development agent she got to identify one of the main causes of poverty in Africa, the issue of limited access and control over resources, unequal power relations between men and women and limited access to decision making for women, etc ...
Currently she is the Coordinator for WOCAN West and Central Africa Region. Prior to now she had worked as Gender Consultant for Heifer International Cameroon, Gender Lenses, and carried out other consultancies as trainer and facilitator for many other international, national and Community based organizations. In her early years as a development professional she worked for SNV (Netherlands development Organization as Technical Assistant for gender from 1997 to 2001, and then as a freelance Consultant with various CBOs, National and International organizations (SNV, WWF, Gender Lenses, etc.)
She is affiliated to many organizations: Help Out (a local human rights sensitization NGO), CAMAUW (Cameroon Association of University Women) working for the empowerment of disadvantaged women and girl child, (USATF) U. S Embassy AIDS Task Force Cameroon and WOCAN and founded EFOKHOYU a local women's network which is contributing in making women's voices heard within her area of origin.

Coordinator - WOCAN Nepal
Kanchan Lama

Kanchan Lama is a Nepali who has extensive experience in implementing projects and participatory training on gender and development. For the past 20 years, she has worked as gender advisor, project director and consultant with Action Aid, Canadian Cooperation Office, Lutheran World Federation, Finnida, FAO, SNV, GTZ and IFAD in Nepal and South Asia. Her innovative work on building a critical mass of rural women change agents within a IFAD/FAO project has succeeded in providing poor rural women rights to land and in institutionalizing gender in forestry and livestock agencies of Nepal’s government. This work, completed in collaboration with Jeannette Gurung, has been showcased in high level international UN meetings and published in numerous journals. This work has provided the model for WOCAN’s vision to link professional and rural women in developing countries. She has authored many published articles, public relations materials and training guidelines on gender analysis and social development issues, and has participated in donor’s project evaluations related to forestry, agriculture and livestock with IFAD, Asian Development Bank, and German and Dutch international NGOs. She currently serves as the Chairperson of the Society for Partners in Development, advisor to the Association of Rural Women Social Mobilisers working in natural resource management, and advisor to the Project Advisory Committee of Canada NGO(2002-2005); she has served as Chairperson to the Policy Advisory Board of MS Nepal (2001-2002), a member of the Project Advisory Committee of UNDP’s Participatory Development Programme (1991-95) and founder advisor of the Feminist Dalit Organization.

Board Member
Rosalud (Jing) de la Rosa

Rosalud Jing de la Rosa was born and raised in Manila. Living in New York for 16 years, she worked with the United Nations system and received her Master's Degree in Public Health at Columbia University. She currently resides in Rome where she works as a gender and rural development consultant for UN Rome-based agencies. For the past 22 years of her professional life, she has worked with a wide variety of international organizations on diverse development issues evolving around the agenda of the global summits of the UN. She has been in the forefront in advocating for women's rights related to sustainable development, reproductive health and access to land and water, particularly in the Africa region. She is deeply involved in supporting participatory research, policy participation, coalition-building, and engaging diverse stakeholders to work together on the implementation of joint programs, having designed and coordinated several global collaborative programs with those aims. She is a member of the International Board of Directors of Environment Liaison Center International (ELCI/Kenya), the International Steering Committee on Global Governance of the World Civil Society Conference Follow-Up (Canada and Switzerland), and the Executive Council and Research Trainer of the Filipino Women's Council (Italy).

Vice-Chairperson
Winston Rudder

Winston is a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago who has approximately forty years experience in development policy, programming and operations at national, regional and international levels. His key responsibilities and assignments over that period include managing local and national agricultural and integrated rural development projects; developing and directing a national agricultural planning system; advising on national and regional agricultural development policy; providing strategic leadership, guidance and management in three government ministries; building constituencies of interest across the public-private sector divide; negotiating with and undertaking international development-oriented assignments for multilateral institutions; serving as representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in South Asia and the Caribbean; reorienting FAO's programmatic interventions to more fully accommodate gender and sustainability considerations; managing FAO's post-tsunami agricultural, fisheries and related relief and recovery support activities in the Maldives. Winston's interest is to remain active in development nationally and internationally, retaining a focus on people-related issues and challenges and ensuring that equity and social justice inform choices and responses. He has for many years, demonstrated his strong support of women who act as agents of change for gender equality.

Board Member
Lorena Aguilar Revelo

Lorena is from San José, Costa Rica. Her efforts towards a sustainable and equitable human development include more than a decade of practical experience in public policy development and design and eight years in integrating social justice and gender perspectives into the use and conservation of natural resources. She is the author of more than 20 books and other publications on gender and environment, environmental health and public policies involving equity. Through her projects and initiatives a wide network of specialists providing technical assistance to more than 150 projects has been formed and more than 6,000 people have been trained using her methodologies. Lorena has extensive experience in UN negotiations on environmental as well as sustainable development issues.

Chairperson
Martha Hirpa

From Ethiopia, Martha is a resource economist whose areas of expertise include gender and development, sustainable natural resource management, agriculture/ rural development, food security, HIV-AIDS, microfinance/credit, and advocacy. Over two decades, Martha has been playing an active role in international development at various levels- ranging from grassroots community development to national and international policy level dialogues. She has taken part in global development issues and policies, including the Millennium Development Project, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Beijing Conference on women. She also coordinated donors, NGOs and government agencies in integrating gender in the National Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for Ethiopia, and successfully initiated and led several groups and organizations around gender issues in sustainable development, including the Group for the Advancement of women (GAW) in Ethiopia. Prior to joining Heifer, Martha was heading a Gender and Development Division of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ethiopia. She successfully led the integration of gender in the undertakings of the Dutch Development Cooperation in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. Martha has served on several boards internationally, including Natural Resource Management Society, Sustainable Natural Resources Management Association of Ethiopia, and Association of Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment in Ethiopia, Agricultural Economic Society of Ethiopia; and Eastern-African gender and leadership group. She has studied, lived and worked in diverse cultural and international settings, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

Board Member
Thelma Paris

A Filipina, Thelma has worked as a social scientist and gender advisor to the IRRI of the CGIAR for over 25 years, gaining a global reputation as one of the first women to advocate for the incorporation of gender within the CGIAR system. Thelma has published over 50 papers on gender and participatory approaches in rice based farming systems throughout Asia, with a focus on assessing strategy, policies and technology options for reducing gender inequity and improving livelihoods of low-income households. Thelma achieved international recognition for her 1994 work on methodologies for integrating gender into farming systems research; since then, she has been active in advocacy, action research/participatory research, training rural women and collaborative work with an interdisciplinary team of scientists to ensure that women are included in each stage of the research and technology development process. Thelma has played key roles in forming and building capacities of professional women's groups, including the Women in Rice Farming Systems (WIRFS) Network; she developed the first "Leadership Course for Asian Women in Agriculture Research & Development," and has mentored many young women interested in working on gender issues in agriculture. She has demonstrated unquestionable commitment and passion to help reduce poverty, empower poor women farmers, and promote gender equality in access to resources and information.

Support Group Member
Rebecca Pearl

Development Program Coordinator at the international organization WEDO (Women's Environment and Development Organization), where she leads advocacy efforts at global environmental decision-making bodies, including the Commission on Sustainable Development. Rebecca served as a consultant to IUCN (World Conservation Union), Commonwealth Secretariat, and UNDP (UN Development Program), and recently worked on energy, climate change, and environmental justice issues on the US-Mexico border. At the Andean Region office of UNIFEM, Rebecca led the Working Group on Gender with UN agencies in Ecuador and helped launch the Program on Economic and Social Rights. Rebecca began her career as a community development worker in rural Nicaragua and worked on campaigns for corporate accountability, human rights, and labor solidarity spanning the US, Latin America, and Burma. Rebecca holds a Master's Degree in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University.

Support Group Member
Eve Crowley

Senior Officer, Rural Livelihoods Strategies and Poverty Alleviation, Rural Institutions and Participation Services, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Rome, Italy

Support Group Member
Barbara Shaw

Policy Advisor, Agriculture and Biotechnology, Economy Policies Division, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Ottawa, Canada

Support Group Member
Yianna Lambrou

Senior Officer, Rural Livelihood Strategies and Poverty Alleviation, Rural Institutions and Participation Service, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Rome, Italy

Support Group Member
Elizabeth McGregor

Policy Advisor, Agriculture and Biotechnology, Economic Policies Division, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
Ottawa, Canada

Support Group Member
John Hourihan

Senior Officer, Gender and Development, Gender and Population Division (SDW) of FAO
Rome, Italy