Stakeholder Forum Fellows and Associates are individual experts at stakeholder engagement in sustainability policy processes on the global, regional, or local level. They share the vision of Stakeholder Forum to advance sustainable development at all levels. Together, they bring decades of experience from within all levels of government, academia, business and industry, the NGO community, and the United Nations’ inter-governmental environment and development processes.
Fellows and Associates are structurally affiliated with Stakeholder Forum in a variety of capacities. Some are engaged to deliver project work for Stakeholder Forum, others are Project Leaders for work that they have brought in-house to be under the Stakeholder Forum umbrella, and some are renowned women and men who bring topic-specific knowledge to the organization. And others are the next generation of sustainability practitioners who share a common vision with Stakeholder Forum.
Leida Rijnhout, Fellow
Leida Rijnhout
Leida Rijnhout is the Chief Executive of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and has been a key advisor to Stakeholder Forum for many years. Before joining the SF family, she worked as a freelancer (www.leapfrog2SD.org) and was the programme coordinator of Resource Justice and Sustainability at Friends of the Earth Europe. In her position as Executive Director of ANPED and director of Global Policies at the European Environmental Bureau, Leida facilitated and coordinated the global NGO community to realize their active engagement in United Nations processes on Sustainable Development and the Environment.
She was heavily involved at and in the preparations of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 (the Johannesburg Summit), at Rio+20 in 2012 (Rio de Janeiro), the development of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development including the SDGs, and the UN Environment Assemblies (UNEA). She is the initiator of SDG Watch Europe.
Professor Daniella Tilbury, Fellow
Prof. Daniella Tilbury
Professor Tilbury is a policy expert, change-maker, and academic leader in Sustainable Development, credited with having developed the initial frameworks for this area of learning. She was a member of the Board of WWF Australia that brought Earth Hour to the World in 2007 and has been actively involved in international initiatives that inspire transitions towards sustainability. Her 2020 ‘Today4Tomorrow’ initiative is focused on embedding intergenerational rights in public policy and governance frameworks.
Before becoming HM Government of Gibraltar’s Commissioner for Sustainable Development in 2018, Daniella was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor and CEO of the University of Gibraltar, an institution that embeds sustainability at its core. She previously held academic leadership and research positions in Australia, the UK, and Hong Kong, and her work has been recognised with over 27 competitive grants and 18 awards. Daniella has been commissioned by over 35 government agencies as well as travelled extensively in Africa, Central, and South America to evaluate the investment and impact of sustainability programmes.
Currently, the UK government’s representative on the UN Economic Commission for Europe on matters relating to Education for Sustainable Development, during 1995-2019 Daniella Chaired several UN Committees and was commissioned by UNESCO to develop think pieces, expert reviews, policy advice, frameworks, and sector evaluations in sustainable development. She advises the European Commission on matters relating to learning for sustainable development, and a Commission working group that brings together government agencies from across member states to advance commitments in this area.
Professor Tilbury has been involved in international meetings on climate change (UNFCCC) and World Summits on Sustainable Development since 1992, informing texts and dialogues during these meetings. In 2021, she was recognised with an Hon. Fellowship by the University of Cambridge, St Catharine’s College, and a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
Felix Dodds, Fellow
Prof. Felix Dodds (photo credit: Earth Negotiations Bulletin)
Felix Dodds has been a leading thinker on global governance for 30 years. Now an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina, and Vice President of Multilateral Affairs at the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainable Solutions Service at Arizona State University, he was an advisor to the Ford Foundation and their grantees for the development of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Co-founder of the Communitas Coalition for supporting SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities, Felix was Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum from 1992 to 2012, and during that time he chaired the first UN Conference in 2011 to identify a set of indicative SDGs.
Author or editor of 24 books on sustainable development, his most recent is ‘Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage,’ and with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch he co-wrote ‘Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals,’ which explained how the SDGs came about and who key players were.
David Horan, Ph.D., Fellow, SDG Partnerships & Governance for the SDGs
David Horan, Ph.D.
Dr. Horan is an Assistant Professor at Trinity Business School in Trinity College Dublin and Fellow of Stakeholder Forum. Since 2018, David has been conducting research on data and governance frameworks for the SDGs with a focus on multi-stakeholder partnerships and their role in supporting effective and equitable implementation. He is the author of “A New Approach to Partnerships for SDG Transformations” and “Towards a Portfolio Approach: Partnerships for Sustainable Transformations.” From 2018-2020, David was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development and UNSDSN in New York.
David has considerable experience in UN engagements on sustainable development, having served for two years as a UCD Additional Representative to the UN. He was invited to speak on partnerships at the UN Expert Group Meeting on SDG17 in 2019 and UN Sustainable Development Transformations Forums 2020-21. To further understand advanced partnership frameworks for well-integrated and inclusive SDG implementation, David is currently studying transnational partnerships in the UN SIDS database for climate action (SDG13), sustainable oceans (SDG14), and biodiversity protection (SDG15). His articles have appeared in Global Policy (forthcoming), Sustainability, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, among other journals.
David can be reached at [email protected]
Dr. David O’Connor, Fellow
Dr. David O’Connor
David O’Connor is a former Permanent Observer to the United Nations from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is Stakeholder Forum’s newest Fellow. Previously, he led the United Nations team that substantively supported the UN General Assembly Open Working Group which crafted the Sustainable Development Goals. Before that, David worked for many years at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Development Centre in Paris, addressing sustainable development challenges of emerging economies. He holds degrees from University College London, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Yale University.
Tanner Glenn, Associate
Tanner Glenn
Tanner Glenn is the founder and principal consultant of TPG Advisory Group, a strategy and social impact consulting firm that specializes in strategic planning, content development, event planning and facilitation, partnerships, community engagement, and digital marketing for private-sector, non-profit, education, and philanthropic organizations around the world. He primarily supports Stakeholder Forum by planning and facilitating virtual workshops, developing budgets and itineraries for major conferences, and coordinating stakeholder partnerships. Since 2016, Tanner has worked with Felix Dodds, former SF Executive Director, to support the Friends of Governance for Sustainable Development by editing and publishing the Governance for Sustainable Development book series. In this capacity, he regularly collaborates with key partners such as the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) and Article 19. Tanner is also the host of Sustainable Society Cafe, a podcast that focuses on emerging technologies and how they fit into realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Tanner holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and urban planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at UNC, he established the nonpartisan University of North Carolina Institute of Politics (IOP) and served for two years as the Institute’s executive director. His work has been featured in major publications including the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Based in Los Angeles and New York City, Tanner is Vice President of the Board of Directors of the American Association for Gifted Children (AAGC).
Jamie Cummings, Associate
Jamie Cummings
Jamie Cummings is a vulnerability project manager of a Belmont Forum-funded grant, Re-Energize Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience. She serves as the climate change focal point for Sendai Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism at the UNFCCC Bonn Climate Conferences and COPs in both Sharm el Sheikh (2022) and Dubai (2023).
Dr. Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi, Associate
Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi
Ahmed Rachid (AR) El-Khattabi is an applied environmental economist whose research focuses on sustainable development, largely focusing on issues that intersect with urban water management. He has published in the areas of economic development, demand management, social/environmental justice, and sustainability/resilience. Dr. El-Khattabi, who holds degrees from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC), the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and Stanford University, is currently the Associate Director for Research and Data at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Environmental Finance Center.
AR is also a Research Associate at the UNC Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Belmont Forum project, an NSF-funded initiative that works on topics related to governance and vulnerability. The project has contributed to UNFCCC Conferences, the UN High-level Political Forum, and the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. He also represented the team at the UN Water Conference and helped promote the UNC Lead Pledge.
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