Directors

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski - Chairman, Creative Director
Paul’s international career in conservation, NGO development and public awareness began when he entered the Peace Corps in 1969 and was assigned to Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. He has managed advertising agencies in Asia, and subsequently developed global public awareness campaigns for WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature and IOF-International Osteoporosis Foundation. He is an award-winning journalist, having written several books and more than 600 by-lined articles in International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Travel and Leisure Golf, Earth Times and CNN Traveller.
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Daniel Navid - President, Chief Executive Officer
Dan is a lawyer, with long experience in international environmental law, having run both the Law Commission of IUCN-World Conservation Union, and UNITAR, a major United Nations environmental law training program. He was secretary general of the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, a global inter-governmental group which brings together more than 100 countries to conserve their wetlands. He has advised governments worldwide about developing environmental legislation in their countries.  Dan is an international lawyer with wide experience in the environment, development and health fields. He is also a published author, having written about golf for leading publications
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Werner Kellerhals - Member of the Board, Treasurer
Werner Kellerhals is a senior executive for Lufthansa German Airlines, having held senior positions in Geneva, Paris, Chicago, New York and currently North Africa.
He is a keen world traveler and golfer, with a particular interest in the impact of global warming on nature, and the important role that individual golfers can play in reducing climate change.
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Thomas P. Rosenfield - Member of the Board, Secretary,
Vice President Technology
Thomas Rosenfield, from New York, received his university degree in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Duke University. He has been resident in Switzerland for almost 27 years.
Rosenfield started his career with the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan where he worked on polymer-related engineering problems. In late 1977, Rosenfield was recruited by Solarex Corporation, a Rockville, Maryland start-up that helped pioneer photovoltaic (solar electric) technology. Projects he worked on included autonomously powered buildings throughout the United States as well as stand-alone desalination plants and other independently powered systems. He coordinated several major research contracts for Solarex (and its Semix subsidiary), the most important being a USD 10 million grant from the United States Department of Energy to develop semi-crystalline silicon, still the most widely used base material for silicon solar cells.
Rosenfield is now president of I-COMM S.A., Lausanne, Switzerland. He has consulted major corporations in the field of water governance and water-based equity investment and the financing and construction of independent grid-connected photovoltaic installations.
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Vitus Fernando - Member of the Board, Vice President Inter-Governmental Partnerships
Vitus started his career with senior positions with the Sri Lanka Ministries of Planning, Economic Affairs and Fisheries, focusing on national poverty alleviation, income generation, and food security.
From 1979 as a Capital Development Officer at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), he was responsible for a wide variety of strategic project design and operational functions, financed under the United States bilateral assistance portfolio to Sri Lanka.
In 1985, Vitus was invited to join the Senior Staff of the Bruntland Commission (WCED) in Geneva, and worked on the elaboration of the Commission’s position on Sustainable Development and also coordinated the work of the technical panels on International Economic Cooperation and Development Assistance.
He joined the World Conservation Union, Switzerland, as the head of the Asia/Pacific Programme,  worked as environmental policy advisor to the Government of Sri Lanka under a World Bank Institutional Strengthening Programme, was attached to the Office of the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva and led a team that devised a series of strategic institutional reforms at the Secretariat.
Vitus  was a member of the Compliance Review Panel of the Asian Development Bank in Manila Philippines to investigate alleged violations of ADB social and environmental policy safeguards in the design and implementation of ADB financed projects and to recommend remedial actions.
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Guy Goh Chor Aun - Member of the Board, Vice President Asian Operations
At 63 I have a few regrets in life. One big regret is not to have started playing golf earlier. I thought 33 was just right. Tried so hard and the best I achieved was a handicap of 12. Fortunately, my other passion in life was publishing. So you put golf and publishing together and you get a magazine called Golf Vacations, which I founded, and which became one of the largest English-language golf magazines in Asia.
Started some 20 year ago, Golf Vacations was my love - a passion. I finally sold off my publishing interest and now live with my family in Melbourne, Australia. I started a new career: baby-sitter or the Aussies call it babyminder. And at the same time I’m trying to be a public golf course hustler. Haven’t figured out how to make money on either. The first is because I am babysitting my dear grand daughter, Sachi Coleman-Goh, and my son and daughter-in law don’t pay a minimum wage. The second is my golf gets worse as age catches up. But still love the game.
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David Spencer Hallmark - Member of the Board, Vice President Strategic Partnerships and Social Equity
David is an lawyer with a specialization in international human rights issues. He has served on the United Nations-related International Commission of Jurists, has studied the suspension of the rule of law in Thailand following a military takeover, and written about interference with the judiciary in Malaysia and the impact of civil war on the legal systems of the Lebanon and Sri Lanka.  He is currently Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Oxford University on international human rights laws.
David has traveled widely, with a particular interest in Southeast Asia, and is a founding director of the Wallacea Foundation which promotes biodiversity conservation in eastern Indonesia.  He has practiced law in Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Seychelles and now heads a family-owned law firm in Worcester UK, which was established in 1790. A third-generation golfer his sporting pinnacle is 40 Stableford points at the famed east coast Scottish course of Royal Dornoch. He is a member of the UK Green Party and has planted over 1000 trees at his family home.
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Jeffrey McNeely - Member of the Board, Vice President Environmental Strategy
Jeffrey A. McNeely is Chief Scientist at IUCN-The World Conservation Union, where he has served in a variety of positions since 1980.  He worked in Asia from 1968 to 1980, including seven years in Thailand, three years in Indonesia and two years in Nepal, working on various aspects of conservation.  He has published extensively on protected areas, invasive species, agriculture, climate change, mammals, and other aspects of biodiversity.  He serves on the Environment Committee at his golf club (Domaine Imperiale) in Switzerland and has advised many other clubs on environmental issues.  He is the author or editor of some forty books and over 500 scientific and popular articles, and serves on the editorial advisory board of fourteen international journals.
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Gordon Shepherd - Member of the Board, Vice President Policy
Gordon joined WWF in 1986 as Director of Information and Education and has been part of the Policy Programme since 1990. A British national, Gordon has worked in various sectors, including industrial health and safety where he worked for four years and in policy and communications for a variety of institutions, including the British Prime Minister's office at 10 Downing Street, the British Ministry of Agriculture, and the Overseas Development Administration.
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Jim Thorsell - Member of the Board, Vice President North American Coordinator
Jim began his conservation career in 1962 as a park ranger in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.
In 1971 he received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and went on to work for five years on conservation projects in the Caribbean and East Africa.
From 1984-2003 he was based at IUCN headquarters in Switzerland as Head of the Natural Heritage Programme where he conducted field missions to over 90 countries.
He has been given various national and international awards for his work in conservation and has published numerous technical books and scientific articles on this topic.
He currently resides in Ajijic, Mexico and Banff, Alberta.
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