Being Good Ancestors: Navigating Nature-Based Leadership Challenges with Dr Éliane Ubalijoro

Small Giants Academy is excited to host ‘Conversations with Extraordinary People’, a webinar series with the world's leading thinkers.

In this conversation, Small Giants Academy’s Head of Programs, Tamsin Jones, will be talking with the CEO of the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), Dr Éliane Ubalijoro, delving into the ways we can find agency within complexity.

Inspired by the ecological dynamics of nature-based systems, they will discuss how we can break out of our islands of knowledge and embrace collective wisdom. Together, they will touch on how we feed the world, sustainable living within planetary boundaries, and reshaping the relationship between biodiversity and human health.

Accessibility is important to us, this wisdom webinar is free.

Meet Éliane Ubalijoro:

Éliane Ubalijoro, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and Director General of ICRAF. An accomplished leader with a background in agriculture and molecular genetics, she serves on several boards and has been recognised for outstanding contributions in the areas of innovation, gender equity, and sustainable prosperity creation. 

Dr Ubalijoro has been a professor of practice for public-private sector partnerships at McGill University since 2008, with research interests focusing on innovation, gender and sustainable development for prosperity creation. From 2021 to March 2023, she was the Executive Director of Sustainability in the Digital Age and the Canada Hub Director for Future Earth. She is a member of Rwanda’s National Science and Technology Council and Presidential Advisory Council, the Impact Advisory Board of the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet, the Advisory Board of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, the Science for Africa Foundation Board, and the Capitals Coalition Supervisory Board, among others. She is a fellow of the International Science Council.

Meet Tamsin Jones:

Tamsin is the Head of Programs and the Mastery of Business and Empathy at Small Giants Academy. She brings several decades of leadership experience and systems change in Europe, Australia and Africa. Tamsin believes the best way to predict the future is to create it, change moves at the speed of trust and the superpower of leadership today is our ability to listen. After working as a policy advisor to the Premier of South Australia over two successful campaigns, Tamsin went on to ignite and co-create a string of initiatives including co-founding: Workshop17 inclusive innovation hub in Cape Town; TheBoardroom Africa to bring board gender balance; and The Rallying Cry to shift investment at the intersection of gender and nature for climate outcomes. She is a strategic advisor to CEOs on feminine leadership, gender lens investing and embodiment and holds an MBA from the University of Oxford as a scholar of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.


Thank you for supporting Small Giants Academy, a not-for-profit organisation and an ACNC registered charity.

Our vision at Small Giants Academy is for a just and inclusive transition to a global economy that supports human flourishing while living in harmony with the natural world. Through articles, podcasts, conversations and masterclasses that illuminate the work of global thought leaders, Small Giants Academy is leading its communities towards a hopeful future, the Next Economy.