IAIA welcomes new Board members
IAIA is pleased to share the results of our recent Board of Directors election. Please join us in welcoming President-Elect Marla Orenstein and Board Directors Verónica Giberti and Justine Namara. Learn more about these three new Board members below.
Marla, Verónica, and Justine join an active, dedicated, international group of existing Board members. We look forward to working with them in forwarding IAIA’s mission and vision.
We also extend our sincere thanks to all candidates who stood for election and for all members who took time to cast their votes.
Marla Orenstein is a long-time IAIA member and past President. Previously as President, she focused on increasing value for our members, including reducing fees for members from developing economies, updating the member registry to make it easier to find other members, and introducing a structure to encourage members to self-nominate for Board positions.
Enhancing member value remains important to Marla. In this new term as President, she wants to build a bridge to the future of impact assessment by: (1) hosting events that link together experienced and newer impact assessment practitioners around the world, (2) by focusing on the needs of practitioners in low- and middle-income countries, which is where the most severe impacts take place, but where impact assessment is often poorly resourced, and (3) by helping IAIA and its members to prepare for emerging issues that will affect us all, such as evolving national regulatory standards, the need to effectively address global climate change, and increased partisanship undermining credible science.
Verónica Giberti is a professor of Environmental Impact and Environmental Management at the University of Buenos Aires and has been involved with the IAIA Training and Professional Development Committee. She was born in Argentina and studied environmental sciences, planning, and management with degrees from FAUBA, UBA (Argentina) and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
Verónica believes that the training, dissemination, and practical application of environmental knowledge is the basis for a sustainable environment and lasting economic development, and that IAIA is the only global entity capable of implementing it.
Justine Namara currently works with Uganda Wildlife Authority as Manager, EIA and Oil Monitoring, and has been in conservation for over 20 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Forestry and Master of Science degree in Environment and Natural Resource Management, and she was awarded a women in conservation award by USAID. As a member of IAIA since 2010, she has attended eight IAIA conferences.
In her time on the Board, Justine would like to see IAIA grow both in number of members (by focusing on member retention and bringing more young people on board) and scope to be able to address the wide environmental challenges faced in the modern world.
