Who We Are

Jonathan Palmer

Executive Director, Conservation Technology

Jonathan Palmer is the Executive Director of Conservation Technology for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Jonathan leads the Conservation Technology team and has leadership roles in a number of key initiatives including SMART, the Conservation Social Science Partnership, Wildlife Insights, and WildLabs. Jonathan has extensive experience covering private, governmental and non-governmental sectors in both the North and the South. This, together with degrees in Mathematics (BSc, Nottingham, UK), Applied Social Sciences (MSc, Oxford) and Geographic Information Systems (MSc, London) and an MBA (Edinburgh Business School), provide Jonathan with a foundation spanning both the technical and human side of technology. Before joining WCS, Jonathan worked as a Strategic ICT Adviser to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in Tanzania and as the software development manager for one of Europe’s leading Service Management software houses. Jonathan’s personal goal is to take a leading role in delivering technology to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, with a specific focus on environmental and conservation issues.

Steven Gallo

Senior Conservation Technologist

Steven Gallo is Senior Conservation Technologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. He first began his work with WCS in 2004 with a focus on systems, infrastructure, and SunSystems, the global finance system at the time. His responsibilities have evolved since to include key roles in the Human Asset Database, the Time and Effort Reporting system, the migration from SunSystems to SAP, the build out of our global budgeting system, the Publications database, WCS' Salesforce implementation, SMART, analytics and reporting, web design and development, the Tiger Conservation Landscape project, KoBo Toolbox integrations, and other related conservation technologies.

Antony John Lynam

Conservation Technology Field Solutions

Antony Lynam Ph.D joined the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 1997. Tony helps to introduce technology at our sites and landscapes, teach staff how to use it for solving conservation problems, and evaluate its effectiveness. His work supporting field programs began with the introduction of passive and active infrared camera-traps for monitoring tigers and other endangered mammals in Asian Mekong countries (1997-2004), training conservation field staff in GPS and navigation techniques (1999-present), introducing mobile data collecting devices for patrolling (2013-present) and use of remote sensing data for deforestation and threats mapping (FIRMS). He collaborated with other experts to publish technical papers on integrated technology for conservation and has presented the results of WCS conservation applications of technology at professional conferences. Since 2004, Antony helped introduce the use of law enforcement monitoring databases at sites under the CITES MIKE programme in 8 countries in Southeast Asia. During 2011-2013 he helped introduce MIST to sites in SE Asia and since 2013 has been actively involved in the training and implementation of the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) around the world representing WCS on the User Council and leading the SMART Training Taskforce. He led the development of SMART training handbooks and other resources. He has organized and taught SMART trainings at local and national levels in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao, Jamaica, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Zambia. He is actively engaged in discussions about integrating new technologies (Earth Ranger, PAWS) with SMART for use in strengthening conservation implementation.

Danielle LaBruna

Associate Director of Conservation Technology

Danielle obtained her Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from James Madison University and her Master's degree in Conservation Biology from Columbia University. She joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2004 as a GIS intern and has held several positions since then. Before joining Conservation Support, she worked as an Outreach Coordinator/GIS Analyst for the Metropolitan Conservation Alliance and as Project Manager for the Mannahatta Project.

Diane Detoeuf

Social Science Technical Advisor

Diane Detoeuf joined the WCS in 2014 where she started providing support to the community conservation teams of several projects in Central Africa. She helped people working on the ground to use tools to measure the impact of conservation interventions on human well-being (Basic Necessities Survey) and local governance (Natural Resources Governance Tool). She then worked with partners to move these tools from paper to cloud based electronic data collection, and trained the teams on how to create, edit and manage data collection forms using KoBoToolbox. Her role expanded outside of Central Africa, and she is now supporting various projects to use digital data collection, cloud-based storage and visualisation for their socio-economic research.

Li Ling Choo

Senior Program Manager

TBD

Omar Torrico

Regional Conservation Technology Specialist, Americas

Omar Torrico serves as Regional Conservation Technology Specialist, Americas

Samantha Strindberg

Wildlife Statistician / Conservation Scientist

Samantha Strindberg is a Wildlife Statistician and Conservation Scientist who joined the Global Conservation Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 2001. She provides statistical design and analysis assistance to WCS colleagues around the world. She focuses in particular on the appropriate application of continually evolving specialized techniques for wildlife surveys, and on conducting statistical analyses to investigate ecological and human-influenced relationships relevant to conservation management and policy.

Samantha also contributes to strategic conservation planning by developing conceptual models and theories of change, and by designing monitoring programs to assess the effectiveness of conservation activities. She provides training workshops on wildlife survey methods and the design of monitoring programs most recently in conjunction with the SMART Ecological Records software. She develops analytical and decision-support software applications as part of her work, such as the Landscape Species Selection software used in the selection of conservation targets. She is a member of the Committee of Scientific Advisors on Marine Mammals with the Marine Mammal Commission. Occasionally, she has the pleasure of participating in field work, most often in cetacean or other marine surveys.

Usmijuka

Regional ICT Generalist, Asia

Usmijuka has been working in the Information Technology field since 2006 and joined WCS in 2012. He has been involved with general support, Website, network infrastructure, hardware & software configuration, and remote support for WCS country program in Asia. his Current role is ICT Generalist, ASIA.

Wenddy Acahuana

Cartographer

Wenddy Acahuana serves as Cartographer at WCS.

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