World Forest ID Executive Director, Jade Saunders, has been awarded the 2024 Henry Arnhold Fellowship by the Mulago Foundation, given to non-profit leaders recognised for having ‘big ideas and the chops to make them happen’.
The Mulago Foundation focuses on effectiveness and scale
The Mulago Foundation finds and funds high-performance individuals, targeting organizations best able to create change, and giving them the support they need to do it. The fellowship honors Henry Arnold, an American banker and philanthropist who fled Nazi-occupied Germany via Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Cuba. The award comes with unrestricted core funding to support and scale effective solutions to big problems in health, poverty, education and conservation.
Harnessing the opportunity for impact
With the support of the Mulago team, Jade will focus on the strategic steps necessary to create a sustainable non-commercial model that ensures access to the utility of the World Forest ID models for all, and includes the potential to finance exponential growth in the creation of new reference data. The ambition will be to rapidly expand the community of current users, making multiple commodity supply chains transparent, thereby driving corporate accountability, as well as articulating and sharing the benefits of this model with foresters, farmers, civil society, communities and governments around the world.
Scot McQueen, President of World Forest ID’s Board of Directors, commented “Jade has worked tirelessly to make World Forest ID a viable organization with a solid offering for determining the origin of timber and other products. Being chosen by the Mulago Foundation is a nod to her professionalism and intellect. Jade is the full package and I’m excited to see her grow through this experience!”
Joining an impressive group of environmental leaders
Jade joins the ranks of notable past fellows, such as Crystal Davis from the Global Forest Watch programme at the World Resources Institute, who leads initiatives to monitor and manage global forest resources using cutting-edge technology and data analysis. Jade also joins an impressive cohort of 2024 Mulago Fellows, each dedicated to solving climate and conservation challenges through scalable solutions. This includes Solange Bandiaky-Badji at Rights and Resources, who works to secure land rights for Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, and Bustar Maitar at the EcoNusa Foundation, who develops co-ops to connect communities with markets for pro-forest products in Eastern Indonesia. Also among the fellows are José Monteiro at ReGeCom, Ines Serra Baucells at BIOSORRA, Dickson Kaelo at Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, Peter Bosip at the Centre for Environmental Law & Community Rights and Shantanu Agarwal at Mati Carbon. Each of these individuals has shown exceptional dedication and ingenuity in tackling some of the world's most pressing environmental issues.
This fellowship recognizes Jade's outstanding leadership whilst also enabling World Forest ID to further its mission of promoting transparency in the global forest-connected supply chains. With the support and resources provided by the Mulago Foundation we are poised to make even greater strides in protecting our planet's forests.
