Melissa Penagos

Colombia

MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, 2020
Julius Baer Scholarship, St Edmund’s Hall
Funding: Oxford-Hoffmann

Melissa is currently working as Technical Specialist on illegal wildlife trade for the Andes Amazon and Orinoco region (Colombia, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador and part of Brazil) in the Wildlife Conservation Society. We have several projects, mainly focused on the Amazon.

Melissa is previously the Coordinator of the Wildlife Centre in Urabá, a region with high rates of illegal trade of wildlife animals and deforestation. She is focused on issues that threaten biodiversity as well as managing interactions between communities and animals. Her work experience has been in environmental Public Corporations.

Prior to this, she interned in the Ibera Project of Conservation Land Trust Argentina, working with the rewilding of locally extinct species. Melissa believes that development and conservation are not inherently contradictory and that it is possible to adapt conservation measures to further communitarian participation and socio-economic benefits. She is inspired to become a leader in the creation of new practices in biodiversity management bringing a combination of technical knowledge and passion for the policy work and her subject. Melissa has an Undergraduate Diploma in Veterinary Medicine, CES University.

Melissa is currently based in Colombia.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-penagos-gaviria-628ba9115/