Gabriella Richardson Temm

Gabriella has over 25 years of experience in advancing human rights, social inclusion, and sustainability in global conservation. With an academic background in sociology and economics, she has led transformative policy reforms and initiatives that integrate social equity into conservation efforts, particularly in Africa. Throughout her tenure at IUCN and WWF, she led innovative social policy shifts and forged strategic partnerships and programs, consistently elevating the role of civil society and inclusion in global conservation.

Since joining the GEF in 2016, Gabriella has been instrumental in transforming the GEF’s approach to gender equality and strengthening its frameworks for stakeholder engagement and environmental and social safeguards. She now drives the GEF’s civil society engagement and leads the GEF Small Grants Program (SGP) - a program that has administered over $1.5 billion of GEF funds to civil society across 136 countries since its inception in 1992. Gabriella has been a driving force behind the GEF SGP reform agenda for GEF-8, executing a bold plan to expand, diversify, and innovate the SGP model and increase access to resources for civil society, Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth; amplifying their voices and actions for global and local environmental and social benefits.