Stephanie Jowers

Stephanie Jowers is currently serving as the Protected Areas Expert at the United Nations. Stephanie’s entrepreneurial background with startup ecosystems has strengthened her commitment to wildlife crime prevention. She has a 25-year track record collaborating with startups, business schools, incubators, ministries, consortiums, incubators, and organizations across six continents. Stephanie has early-career experience creating geopolitical networks, social movements, advocacy conferences, and public policy campaigns. She played a pivotal role in the passage of the California Desert Protection Act in US Congress, which saved 6.7 million acres of land and wildlife. She helped to establish the youth environmental movement into a powerful grassroots lobby and was an inaugural board member of a human rights organization in 35 countries. Stephanie was a US Peace Corps Small Business Development Volunteer in Tangier, Morocco and Director of Membership and Strategic Relations at the National Peace Corps Association. As co-owner of a branding company in New York City, she led management strategy for clients such as The Nature Conservancy, YWCA, United Nations Foundation, and Public Broadcasting Service. For a decade, Stephanie served as Advisor at Columbia Business School and The Lang Center for Entrepreneurship. She is Advisor at a technology incubator for entrepreneurs in emerging markets and Advisor to India’s first private wildlife sanctuary. As a Mentor of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Global, she supported five female founders of early-stage startups in India with funding support from the US Mission in India and US Department of State. Stephanie was Lead Scale Advisor of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, a USAID-funded program (in partnership with National Geographic, the Smithsonian and TRAFFIC) that rewarded science and tech solutions to combat wildlife crime. She was also Development Strategist at Niassa Wilderness Trust, a one-million-acre property with free-roaming wildlife in the Niassa Reserve of Mozambique.