Oli Brown
Founder
Oli Brown has been working at the nexus of security, natural resources and climate change for the past 17 years, with a particular interest in peacebuilding, conflict mediation, natural resource management, environmental politics and trade policy. He is an Associate Fellow with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and also Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs). He is a member of the Climate and Security Expert Network run by the German think-tank adelphi, is a strategic advisor to IMPACC – a social enterprise incubator seeking to create green jobs for people in the Global South – and serves as a trustee for the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a British NGO which draws attention to environmental damage during conflict. Oli has extensive experience working for the United Nations. Between 2014 and 2018 he was based in Kenya where he coordinated the work of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to minimize the risks and impacts of disasters, industrial accidents and armed conflicts. From 2010 to 2012 Oli managed a UNDP country programme in Sierra Leone. Prior to this, Oli was a senior researcher with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Paige McCalahan
Director
Paige is an award-winning writer and editor with more than a decade of experience writing about economics, the environment and international development. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and her writing has also appeared in The Guardian, BBC News, and The Washington Post, among many other outlets. As an editor, she worked from The Guardian’s headquarters in London and managed the publication of a technical newsletter with more than 10,000 subscribers. Born in Chapel Hill Carolina, Paige has lived in Switzerland, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, Kenya and France, her current home.
Sophie Tholstrup
Senior Advisor
Sophie Tholstrup is a humanitarian policy expert focused on climate adaptation, helping humanitarian organisations adapt their approaches to the climate crisis era. She was previously Director of Technology for Development Policy at the Tony Blair Institute, leading a team spread across four continents on high-impact policy projects including managing climate disasters. She helped lead the biggest recent change in humanitarian response – the rise of cash assistance – leading policy for theCALP network, serving as UN OCHA‘s cash advisor and leading cash responses in Haiti and Somalia. Before this, she was Special Assistant to OCHA’s Director of Operations and a Humanitarian Advisor with the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), leading humanitarian response in Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Matthieu Guillier
Junior Research Associate
Matthieu is a young professional with a bachelor’s degree in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick and a Master’s in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He has expertise in qualitative research related to conflict, climate security, and peacebuilding. He is passionate about reinventing peacebuilding practices and systems to integrate more inclusion and innovation.
Research Associate
Charlotte Penel is completing her PhD at the University of Liverpool, which is on the transformation of security institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean region. She currently holds a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney and a Master in International Law and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Over the past three years, Charlotte has been working on a project titled ‘Commercial Military Actors in Armed Conflicts Dataset’, which provides data on these actors from 1980 to 2016. She is a passionate and motivated researcher with extensive experience and knowledge on international relations, peace and conflict, Latin American security, international law, and adaptation to climate change through various research projects in Australia, Ecuador, the UK and in Switzerland..
Charlotte Penel
Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman
Junior Research Associate
Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman is a Master’s student studying Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at Sciences Po Paris and holds a Bachelor’s in International Relations and Sociology from the Johns Hopkins University. She’s especially interested in the intersection between migrant rights and environmental sustainability, and has worked in refugee humanitarianism for various organizations such as Relief International and eachOne. Giuliana is also fluent in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and is learning Arabic.
Anastasiia Savotina
Junior Research Associate
Anastasiia has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Astrakhan State University with an additional qualification in Professional translation. She worked in the field of written translation and interpretation in Russia and Poland and speaks Russian, English, Polish and is learning French. Anastasiia is interested in migration crises, international security and social protection.
Léa Périllat
Junior Research Associate
Léa is currently pursuing her Master in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at Sciences Po. She holds a Bachelor degree in International Relations during which she specialized in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Balkans. Having been raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she was made aware of peacebuilding and conflict resolution issues early on. It is her desire to get involved in environmental peacebuilding, particularly in a humanitarian context. She speaks French, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, English, and is learning Spanish.