Who We Are

CO-FOUNDER

Olivier was the CFO of Chantecaille Beauté for more than 20 years since its founding in 1998, where he helped pioneer the company’s give-back philanthropy model. Alongside his wife, Sylvie, he has traveled the world meeting with conservation leaders whose work they support, and in 2022 helped launch the Chantecaille Conservation Foundation, to ensure their family legacy is true to their ideal to preserve the planet’s wildlife.

DIRECTOR

A lifelong outdoor enthusiast, Rory is committed to working to preserve wild spaces and clean water environments. His interest in wildlife and outdoor pursuits globally have provided him a first-hand perspective on the critical threats to fish and wildlife populations resulting from climate change, population growth and the overexploitation and mismanagement of natural resources. His career has spanned 25 years as a UK- and US-based private equity investor focused on the consumer sector. He has a particular interest in the healthy lifestyle industry working with food and beverage businesses that are better for the environment and human health. He brings experience both as a trustee and portfolio company advisor, having served on the board of numerous multinational branded businesses over the course of his career. Rory holds a BA from Skidmore College and MBA from Columbia Business School.

PROJECT MANAGER, ROMANIA

Joe hails from the UK, where his passion for the outdoors, nature, and especially birds was kindled, leading to his studies in Wildlife Conservation. Having traveled the globe working on various bird research projects, he found his place in the Transylvania region of Romania, where he has lived for more than two years. He works in a collective group (part of the wider Longo Mai network) in Hosman, a small village, doing small-scale agriculture, mounting cultural events, holding workshops, and focusing on various social and environmental projects.

PROJECT MANAGER, COLOMBIA

Paula is a Colombian anthropologist and gardener with a Master´s degree in history and a strong passion for nature and sustainability. For more than ten years, she worked with victims of Colombia’s civil war in historical memory processes, and land and territory restitution for indigenous peoples who were dispossessed of their lands and land rights. This is where her passion and interest in sustainable landscapes, biodiversity, and innovation for biodiversity grew. She traveled to India and Mexico, where she learned from the agroecological farmers’ movement, seed saving, permaculture, and holistic approaches to understand our relationship with nature, food sovereignty, and precolonial culinary practices. After this, she moved to La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (the Colombian Caribbean Coast), where she's been living and working in intercultural projects related to jaguar conservancy, heirloom seeds, freshwater restoration and, more recently, fibers, natural colors, and weaving techniques as an expression of indigenous systems of thought—and crucial to guaranteeing connectivity from the snow peaks to the Caribbean ocean.

PROJECT MANAGER, NEVADA

Born in Florida and raised in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Midway Island, and Southern California, J.T. retired from Verizon Communications in 2010 and now makes his home in Carson Valley, Nevada. His passion has long been wildlife and the outdoors—from viewing to conservation, but mostly photography. For the last fourteen years, he has trained his lens on the wild horses of Carson Valley, where he manages the Buckeye Creek Ranch and Nature Preserve in partnership with the American Wild Horse Campaign. His images are available on his website.

PROJECT MANAGER, KENYA

Stephanie has spent three decades doing field and community-based conservation research and implementation. She has her PhD in Conservation Science and has studied human-wildlife interactions, specifically carnivores and avian adaptation to humans, throughout America and Africa, working at remote sites and diverse habitats ranging from alpine to savanna, as well as species from endangered birds to lions and hyenas. She has spent the past two decades co-leading and learning from a team of Maasai warriors and conservationists in southern Kenya. Stephanie’s passion for conservation and Indigenous knowledge, combined with her steadfast commitment to partnering with local communities, her wealth of experience in science, and her eye for innovation, have been driving forces in the programs she has led, including Lion Guardians, LiNC (Lion Network of Collaborators), and Wildlife Guardians. Stephanie is a PRIDE Lion Conservation Alliance member, the African Lion Working Group, Kenya's National Large Carnivore Task Force, and a research affiliate at the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa, University of Cape Town.