Meet the Team

Leticia is a senior global technical advisor supporting countries from Latin America, Africa, and Asia Pacific on the implementation of the Paris Agreement, with a focus on promoting the transparency of their climate targets and enabling their access to performance-based finance for the forest sector. She leads UNDP Climate and Forests work on carbon markets. She has more than 15 years of experience structuring policies and mechanisms to incentivize tropical forest conservation and climate change mitigation.

Nina is a Senior Policy Adviser on Indigenous Peoples and Local Community Engagement with close to 20 years of experience in bringing the voices of IPLCs to various policy for a and working with the UN and NGOs on rights protection, capacity building, and community development. Nina brings a deep understanding of Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ needs and concerns, as well as of ways of partnering effectively to achieve climate and biodiversity goals.

Jen’s areas of expertise include social and environmental standards, assessment and management, governance, stakeholder engagement, indigenous peoples and local communities, and grievance mechanisms. Jen also co-led in the design and implementation of UNDP’s Social and Environmental Standards (SES), Stakeholder Response Mechanism (SRM) and Social and Environmental Compliance Unit (SECU), established in 2015.

Alexis has over 10 years’ experience working for think tanks and NGOs in Latin America, the United States and UK, on energy policy, economic and social policy, and international development. When not working on climate & forests, Alexis can be found hiking and biking in the French Alps.

Celina brings over 20 years of experience in forest and timber industries, forest certification and timber legality schemes, community forestry, mediation, grievance redress, indigenous peoples, participatory facilitation and project management to the team. She is leading the team in Asia-Pacific.

Simone is an PhD in environmental economics with 20 years of international work experience on climate change, biodiversity, land use, and sustainability. She joined the team in 2020 working in advising projects and countries on forest conservation and restoration practices and policies. She lives in an ecovillage in the middle of the Brazilian Cerrado where she grows veggies and windsurfs on the lake.

Noelia is an enthusiastic climate change professional with an MSc in Climate Change and International Development by the University of East Anglia and more than 14 years of work experience in Latin America.

Beth brings over 10 years of gender and climate-forest experience to the team and provides support on mainstreaming gender and women’s empowerment principles within all of its policy and operational activities. She loves spending time with her family biking and hiking through the woods around her house.

Laura has over 15 years of experience in the financial and administrative area, she combined work with the private sector and with multilateral entities. She provides administrative, budget, management, travel and logistical support to the Panama-based UNDP Climate and Forests team.

Mariana recently joined the Climate & Forests Programme in 2021 to support its work with the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF). She brings over six years of experience in project management, communications, grassroots relational organizing, and community engagement. Having grown up by the beach, she feels most at peace when reading by the shore.