BirdLife Policy flock grows

BirdLife International is excited to announce that Ms Nina Mikander is joining its Global Leadership Team as Director of Policy as of March 1st. Nina hails from Finland and has over 17 years of experience in international environment and biodiversity policy. Most recently she has served in the Finnish Ministry of Environment where she has been the Senior Specialist for Biodiversity. Nina will be heading the Global Policy Department and leading on the development and implementation of BirdLife’s international policy agenda.

Nina said:

“I am thrilled to join BirdLife at this critical time, given the partnership’s unique role, and potential, in successfully addressing the current biodiversity and climate crises. In addition to advancing ambitious conservation policy,  BirdLife has been at the forefront of progressing the mainstreaming of nature into other key sectoral policies at global, regional and national levels. My first priority will be to kick off the development of the organization’s new strategy for policy influence, in which we will map out those international and regional processes most relevant for tackling the critical existential nature and climate crises, and thereby achieving the targets of the new BirdLife Global Strategy and regional plans.”

In addition to serving as the Head of Delegation for Ramsar and the Bern Convention, Nina has worked with a wide array of global and regional multilateral environment agreements as well as on EU environment and nature conservation issues.  She has served as policy lead on an incredibly wide-ranging set of challenges among them, avian issues, wetland conservation, invasive alien species, illegal killing, sustainable use, human-wildlife conflicts and renewable energy. Prior to her role at the Finnish Ministry, Nina was based at the UN Environment Programme’s African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement and the Convention on Migratory Species Secretariats focusing on flyway conservation and species action planning. 

Nina is passionate about everything nature and adores taking photographs and foraging. She admits that if she was forced to choose, one of her most recent favorite birds is the ever-elegant Inca Tern.