Dominic Wodehouse, PhD
Executive Director & CBEMR Trainer
After 10 years in advertising in London, Kiev, Jakarta and Bangkok for various multinational agencies, Dominic changed direction to follow a passion for trees and forests. He worked as a professional arborist in the UK while taking an MSc in Sustainable Development at Imperial College London/SOAS to facilitate a move into mangrove conservation. From 2006, he was a mangrove technical officer for Wetlands International and at the same time volunteered with MAP, assisting field projects in Thailand. Between 2011 – 2019 he has been teaching Community-Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration for MAP in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar (2011, 2017, 2019), Colombia, Suriname, Tanzania (2019, 2020), Senegal and Honduras (2014, 2015) while at the same time writing a part-time PhD at Bangor University (UK), studying community mangrove management and restoration. On completion of his doctorate in 2019, he moved into the Executive Directorship role within MAP. Dominic is a member of the IUCN Mangrove Specialist Group. [email protected]
Alfredo Quarto
International Program & Policy Director, Co-Founder
Alfredo Quarto has over 40 years of experience in organizing and writing on the environment and human rights issues. He is the co-founder of MAP (1992) as well as former ED, and currently serves as MAP’s international program director. Formerly an aerospace engineer, his experiences range over many countries and several environmental organizations, with a long-term focus on forestry, indigenous cultures and human rights. Prior to MAP, he was the director of the Ancient Forest Chautauqua, a multimedia traveling forum with events in 30 West Coast cities on behalf of old-growth forests and indigenous dwellers. Alfredo has published numerous popular articles, book chapters, and conference papers on mangrove forest ecology, community-managed sustainable development, and shrimp aquaculture. [email protected]
Laura Michie, PhD
Programs Manager, CBEMR Trainer
Laura is MAP’s Programs Manager and a CBEMR Trainer. Laura has a background in marine biology and has over 10 years’ experience working in mangroves and coastal wetlands, specializing in ecosystem services, plant/animal interactions and invertebrate ecology. Laura has a PhD from the University of Portsmouth on the role of fiddler crabs in Indonesian mangrove ecosystems. Laura is passionate about scientific outreach and has experience as a scientific advisor on natural history documentaries, working with Terra Mater films and National Geographic Channel. [email protected]
Jim Enright
CBEMR Trainer
Jim Enright is MAP’s CBEMR Trainer and former Asia Coordinator (1999-2018), overseeing every stage of MAP’s projects in Thailand and the region from proposal writing to monitoring, report writing, and managing staff in the Thai office. Though semi-retired from this position, he continues to assist MAP with Community-based Ecological Mangrove Restoration (CBEMR) training workshops around the globe. Before joining MAP in 2000, he spent 7 years working on coastal resource issues in Thailand, as a national park interpreter in Khao Sam Roi Yot and with the Thai NGO Yadfon Foundation which promotes community-based coastal resource management with coastal fishing communities in Trang. Jim has an honors degree in Environment Resource Studies with a specialty in international development. He is based in Trang, southern Thailand, and speaks conversational Thai. [email protected]
Martin Keeley
Education Director
Martin Keeley, MAP’s Education Director, brings 17 years of experience as a teacher and over 25 years in environmental education to his work developing and implementing MAP’s Mangrove Curriculum with teachers, NGOs, and Education Ministries worldwide. Before joining MAP, Martin was the founder and Executive Director of a wetland education project called the Friends of Boundary Bay/Fraser River for Life Communications Society – based on the border of BC, Canada and Washington state- for 8 years. With more than 45 years of experience in communications and education, he has developed extensive and award-winning environmental education programs on wetlands. Martin lives in the Cayman Islands.
Cassandra MacDowell
Education Program Manager
Cass is a young environmentalist from the island of Cayman Brac who has a passion for education and environmental conservation. By growing up on a small island with less than 2,000 people and a very wild and natural environment, Cass gained a unique appreciation for wildlife and flora at a very young age. During and after high school, she volunteered extensively with various environmental nonprofits in the Cayman Islands and worked for the Central Caribbean Marine Institute as an education intern before becoming a Field Warden at the Blue Iguana Conservation Program with the National Trust on Grand Cayman.
She has joined the MAP team after just over a year of volunteering with the Mangrove Education Project and their Cayman based outreach program, The Mangrove Rangers. Cass is excited to expand her educational reach beyond the Cayman Islands and hopes to inspire young people around the world to appreciate and experience nature in an elevated way.
Leo Thom
Creative Director
Leo is a filmmaker and digital content creator based in the UK, with a passion for visual storytelling and nature. Having co-founded and run Room60 for 5 years, he specialised in producing engaging animations and graphics that delivered core messages about landscape and environmental ideas. Emmy nominated, and clients include Transport for London, Asian Development Bank, Lion TV, Landscape Institute, The Helix and The Canal & River Trust. Having built up his knowledge of
mangrove ecosystems, he now works as a Creative Director with MAP creating multi-platform content to improve visibility of the organisation and bringing their stories of their work and projects to life. Currently finishing off another postgraduate Masters, in Wildlife Filmmaking, in partnership with the BBC Natural History Unit in the global capital of natural history programme making, Bristol.
[email protected]
Hesper Kohler
Development Assistant
Hesper Kohler is a science communicator and naturalist who joined MAP at the beginning of 2021. She has always loved mangroves and did her thesis in Fiji on river water quality and the filtering ability of mangroves on E. coli bacteria. She then jumped climates and worked summers as a fisheries biologist in the Alaskan Gulf doing population surveys on Pacific halibut. After realizing her interests were more in scientific outreach, Hesper spent several years in environmental education and is excited to return her focus to the tropics and mangroves.
Monica Gutierrez
Calendar Coordinator
Monica Gutierrez-Quarto is a Chilean artist and printmaker who has helped coordinate the MAP International Children’s Art Calendar contest for the last 12 years. These beautiful calendars are gaining in popularity with each year. Monica also assists with database entry. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.
Contact: tel (360) 452-5866 or [email protected]
Sam Nugent
Newsletter Director
MAP News Editor, (Part time). Sam is a graphic designer and editor. He also manages the graphic arts department for several small newspapers in the region around Port Angeles, WA where he is based.
[email protected]
MAP Advisory Staff
Jaruwan Kaewmahanin (Ning)
Field Project Manager
(Ning) Field Project Manager Thailand, overseas MAP’s EMR and livelihood field program. Presently, she is heading the implementation of MAP’s four year project “Mangrove Restoration and Reforestation in Asia, a Project for Knowledge Exchange and Action to Protect Climate change, Forest and Biodiversity” Ning joined MAP in 2006 and came with 4 years experience in project management and coordination of action research related to mangrove for the Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and Pacific (RECOFTC). She has 13 years in project management and coordination of action research related to mangrove and community-based natural resource management and networking among communities at the provincial, regional and international levels. She also has 5 years experience in participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for natural resource management, including field application, training curriculum development and training of trainers. While with Greenpeace she was involved in environmental education for children.
[email protected]
MAP Interns
Bella Corpora
Program Development & Research Assistant
Bella Corpora has a background in nature-based and technological carbon removal methods, including research on coastal blue carbon systems and how mangroves can help mitigate climate change. With MAP, Bella has facilitated CBEMR trainings for countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region and conducts research for the team. She has worked for the UN Environment Programme on a disaster risk reduction team and is currently a research fellow with a carbon removal think tank in Washington DC. Bella enjoys helping solve environmental issues and has lived in Taiwan, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. She has a BS in Society and Environment and BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Rachel Biton
MAP Intern
Rachel Biton is a recent graduate from Eckerd College, in St.Petersburg, Florida with a Bachelors of Science degree in Marine Science with a Biology track. Throughout her undergraduate study, she was a research student in Dr. Lessmann’s Wetland Restoration Laboratory conducting research on mangrove ecosystems. Her research interests include soil development and restoration efforts in mangrove forests. Since graduation, she has been working remotely for Dr. Lessmann along with a manuscript publication in the current works. Her love for mangroves has given her the recent opportunity to become an intern for the MAP team working on the Marvellous Mangrove program.