Brent Nordstrom

Brent leads WWF’s Environmental and Social Safeguards Team in the US that ensures that WWF’s on-the-ground activities support human rights and address potential unintended adverse social impacts. Brent works with WWF to better understand its human rights and social commitments and to develop approaches to fulfill those obligations. He also helps ensure that WWF’s interventions are impactful, adaptively managed, and incorporate sustainable financing by managing WWF’s Conservation Finance and Conservation Strategies and Measures teams. WWF’s Conservation Finance Team design innovative long-term financing options for conservation efforts. The Conservation Strategies and Measures team who support the well thought out planning and adaptive management of conservation projects and initiatives.

Brent has been working for WWF for over twenty years on both the interface of community empowerment and conservation and of policy and on-the-ground conservation. After studying international conflict and conflict resolution in graduate school, Brent was hired by WWF-International’s Macroeconomic Program Office. There he spent ten years supporting on-the-ground interventions to jointly address poverty and environmental degradation. He carried out advocacy efforts with international development institutions and governments to enable local communities improve their livelihoods and empower them in their efforts to conserve the environment on which they depend. Brent later joined WWF’s Policy program where he supported policy interventions with the US Government and multilateral institutions largely focused on public sector funding and the role of conservation in US foreign policy and strategic interests. In 2012, he designed WWF’s first environmental and social safeguards system and has overseen WWF-US’s safeguards work since then. In 2018, he moved to his current role supporting WWF-US’s Chief Conservation Officer.