I am the Vice Chair of the Young Professionals network of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN’s WCPA) 

The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) is the world's premier network of protected area expertise. It is administered by IUCN's Global Programme on Protected Areas and has over 1,700 members, spanning 140 countries.
WCPA works by helping governments and others plan protected areas and integrate them into all sectors; by providing strategic advice to policy makers; by strengthening capacity and investment in protected areas; and by convening the diverse constituency of protected area stakeholders to address challenging issues. 

The Young Professionals Group of the IUCN WCPA is a collective forum of like-minded young peoples associated with protected areas and conservation. 
My work as the Vice Chair is to foster intergenerational partnerships between established and emerging young Protected Area leaders and professionals to contribute in meaningful ways to the work of WCPA and broader IUCN in valuing and conserving biodiversity, governing nature’s use and sharing its benefits equitably, and deploying nature-based solutions to global challenges.

As part of my role as a member of the IUCN WCPA Young Professionals group I: 

• Contributed, together with other members of this group, to write and review the stream plan “Inspiring a New Generation” for World Park Congress (WPC). 
• Participated and represented the IUCN WCPA Young Professionals group at the International Marine Protected Areas Conference (IMPAC3)  in Marseille. There I organised and facilitated a workshop with other young professionals attending the conference and as a result I produced a resolution outlining our priorities and recommendations for marine conservation that will be integrated in the IMPAC3 resolution and then presented at WPC. The resolution was also published on the award winner ocean conservation blogs: The Official MPA Blog ​

iucn World Parks Congress, sydney 2014

I led and organised the integration of the marine cross-cutting theme into the Inspire a New Generation Stream 8 of World Parks Congress 2014 and in particular:

from left: Richard Vevers (Catlin Seaview Survey) Ved Chirayath (NASA Ames Research Center) Brian Sullivan (Google Earth) Sally Barnes (Director of National Parks-Australia) Andy Sharpless (President Oceana) Dan Laffoley (WCPA-Marine) Chip Cunliffe (Catlin Insurance) Jenifer Austin (Google Ocean) Sylvia Earle (Mission Blue) Kathy Zischka (ACIUCN) Mariasole Bianco (Worldrise) Rebecca Koss (IUCN IPS)

• Designing and delivery of the pre-congress Young Leader Capacity Development Workshop

• Presenter and session manager for the “Networking for nature: the future is cool” session that will showcase game-changing ocean initiatives with presentations by Sylvia Earle and Mission Blue, Catlin Seaview Survey and Google, Oceana, & SkyTruth

• Presenter at the Intergenerational Dialogues Session and leader of one the dialogue roundtables

• Session manager and moderator of the Empowering Young Professionals session

• Developing an Inter-Leadership Framework for organisations and sectors to mentor, fund and develop young professionals

• Developing the Young Peoples Pact for People, Parks and Planet: the Young Professional overarching legacy document for the Congress
  

How I became a member World Commission on Protected Areas

I became a member of the WCPA thanks to my passion and enthusiasm to build public awareness, appreciation and support for nature. One day I was running an information stall at the market when a woman approached the stall. Like I usually do with everyone I welcomed her and asked if she wanted more information about the proposed CSMR. As she said yes I started to explain the proposed zoning system of the reserve and provide her with all the information needed to better understand the benefits of marine protected areas and the importance of protecting the outstanding biological values of the Coral Sea. At the end of my explanation, because at that time we were in a public consultation period, I kindly asked her to sign our generic submission to the government. She replied that as the Director of the Australian Committee for IUCN she had already submitted one. That woman was Penelope Figgis the Director of the Australian Committee for IUCN and she told me that she was very impressed by my warmth, enthusiasm, good people and communication skills and great commitment. Penelope said that all these skills would be of great benefit in the international conservation community of IUCN and specifically of the WCPA and she asked me if she could propose my membership for the WCPA. Since then we have established an ongoing working relationship and I helped her during the True Blue Marine Symposium: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Marine Environment organised by the Australian Committee of IUCN and held in Melbourne in June 2013.