Leadership

Connected Conservation Foundation Board Members

Bruce 'Doc' Watson

From an early age, Doc has been passionate about wildlife. Before embarking on a tremendous career in technology, Doc was a zoology teacher, sharing his love and care of nature. He was the co-founder of technology giant Dimension Data, now known as NTT Ltd.

His desire and focus remain unchanged; find ways to partner with like-minded, big-hearted people to harness technology for conservation. Doc shared his conservation passion with Care for Wild, National Geographic, Peace Parks, African Parks, The Vulcan Trust, and Buckingham Palace. With rhino poaching in South Africa at a crisis point, he wanted to act before the species disappeared altogether. Founding the Connected Conservation pilot project put Doc’s passion into practice, and he continues to work on protecting wildlife species around the world.

Alexander Rhodes

Alexander is a conservationist and a lawyer. He has an enduring fascination in the wonder and diversity of nature, and a passion to find ways for us to live more constructively amongst it. Managing Associate in Mishcon Private based in London, he is also the founding CEO of the charity Stop Ivory; head of the Secretariat to the inter-governmental Elephant Protection Initiative; and as trustee and co-chair of the Strategic Projects Committee of Tusk Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and a Conservation Fellow of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). In 2018, ZSL named Alexander its' Conservationist of the Year. In the recent year, Alexander has founded and has become CEO of Mishcon Purpose, providing strategic Environmental, Social and Governance advice and purpose-driven insight to help clients in the rapidly changing world.

Jonathan Baillie

Jonathan Baillie is an evolutionary biologist and leading conservationist. He’s deeply committed to keeping at least half of the planet in a natural state and ensuring the future the world's most evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species. He conducted his PhD on the persistence and vulnerability of island endemic birds, habituated baboons in Namibia, lived in the rainforest of Gabon for two years studying gorillas, searched for Attenborough's long beaked echidna in the Cyclops Mountains and discovered a new species of crab in the Gulf of Guinea. As Chief Scientist of National Geographic Society, he initiated a large scale campaign to secure 30% of the planet by 2030. Jonathan has since left National Geographic Society and has started his own venture, Natural State.

Dave Ward

Dave is an avid outdoorsman from the oceans to the mountains and every ecosystem in-between. His career began in Sustainable Development at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Forest Resources, and then discovered a passion in technology, building out the Internet and the equipment and architectures that run it. Enabling communication whether people or, sensing the environment has been the focus. Designing pragmatic solutions that create the most value from technology is his most recent goal and why he’s part of Connected Conservation Foundation.

Connected Conservation Foundation Leadership

Sophie Maxwell - Executive Director

Sophie has spent her career developing and implementing cutting-edge technology. She forges collaborations across conservation, science, business and communities to solve conservation challenges through technology. She recently established the WILDLABS Tech Hub, teaming with the U.K. government, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, the Open Data Institute and seven international conservation organisations to pioneer new ways for data exchange and accelerating the use of artificial intelligence to help tackle the illegal wildlife trade.

Previously, Sophie headed up the Zoological Society of London’s Conservation Technology Lab, building partnerships with Google, Iridium, National Geographic, the Foreign Commonwealth Office and USAID. Delivering projects: Instant Detect, a satellite connected IOT platform for the protection of wildlife in remote areas (awarded USAID's Wildlife Crime Technology Award); Instant Wild, a citizen science crowd source platform for wildlife monitoring; WILDLABS.NET, a technology collaboration platform (founding Steering Committee member); and the first global Zoohackathon events, (co-founded in partnership with the US Embassy).