Peru team
Patricia Romero
Managing Director, Peru
As Managing Director, Patricia is responsible for activities across Peru in both our Ucayali and Loreto programmes. In 2018 she oversaw the planting of 14,000 trees and is now working to further scale up our opportunities . Her role includes the provision of training to farmers as well as working alongside them to build their capacity in nursery management and the restoration of degraded lands. Prior to joining our team she has worked in both the non-profit and private sector in the Amazon basin in natural resource and forestry management. Patricia holds a degree in Forestry Engineering from the National University of Ucayali. She is based in Pucallpa, Ucayali.
Sergio Lopez
Programme Coordinator, Loreto
Sergio works with and alongside the farmers in our Loreto programme to provide guidance and assistance to help them build capacity through doing. With a technical college qualification in Sustainable Tropical Agriculture from ‘El Milagro’ in Loreto and 15 years experience in the agriculture sector — including with the Spanish Cooperation working across the Peruvian Amazon, Agrobanco in smallholder credit and regional government in Loreto — he has a passion for agroforestry that is vital to the success of Plant Your Future and its farmers.
Jorge Chavez
Forestry Expert
Jorge provides specialist technical advice to the project on the design and management of our agroforestry systems. He has over 35 years experience working in sustainable forest management in the Peruvian Amazon. He is a recognized expert within the Amazon region for his expertise and success with reforestation of degraded land with native trees species. He holds a degree in Forestry Engineering from the Central University of Peru. He is based in Pucallpa, Ucayali.
Trustees – Plant your Future
Jenny Henman
Chairman and Founder
After spending time in Peru researching her Master’s thesis with Brown University, USA, Jenny felt compelled to help provide grassroots support to smallholder farmers she had met. And so in 2009, she founded Plant Your Future to simultaneously help reduce poverty and environmental degradation. With 14 years experience in the global forestry and climate change mitigation sector working for The Nature Conservancy in Washington DC, and Sustainable Forestry Management and Green Resources, her specialism is tropical forestry, community development and carbon.
As co-author of the Climate, Community and Biodivetsity Alliance standard, and having led the first project in the world to achieve validation and verification under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) in the AFOLU sector, Jenny has the knowledge, expertise and passion to successfully lead Plant Your Future forward towards helping achieve its goals.
Mads Asprem
Trustee
Mads Asprem brings a wealth of experience and technical knowledge that spans over 20 years within forestry, landscape restoration and climate change mitigation and 20 years in finance. This includes working within equity markets and investment banking and founding Green Resources where he was CEO from 2007 to 2016 and grew to become Africa’s largest reforester since 2000. Today, he is Managing Partner of NewAfrica Impact. He holds a BSc from Wharton, an MBA from Chicago Booth and was a Fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative in 2017.
Grace Clegg
Trustee
Grace first became involved with Plant Your Future following a request for volunteer copywriters. Inspired by the three aims of the charity, she has since gone on to lead the website redesign, and is working with the team to form the charity’s communication strategy going forward. Grace has had a diverse career within the public and private sectors, both in the UK and overseas, and more recently was a marketing manager within the financial sector. She brings new capacity and creativity, helping to improve donor engagement and charity exposure.
La Asociación Civil Planta tu Futuro
Board of Directors
Jenny Henman
Board Member and President
Juan Jose Cardenas
Board Member and Secretary
As Partner of EY Law in Perú, Juan José is an attorney with more than 25 years of experience in developing and financing public and private projects in Peru and the Latam region. This includes transportation infrastructure (airports, ports, toll roads, etc), urban highways and telecom networks for rural areas. As part of these projects over the last 10 years, Juan José collaboration and advice has contributed to reforestation in Peru, and crucially helped avoid deforestation projects — it’s clear why he feels glad to be able to support the PYF mission to address environmental degradation and improve livelihoods in his own country. Juan José holds a Master Degree in Financial Law from The London School of Economics (LSE) and recently has been recognized as one of the 24 lawyers around the world regarded as Global Elite Thought Leaders in Project Finance by Who´s Who Legal (a prestigious UK-based law journal).
Andrés Huby
Board Member and Treasurer
With over 13 years of experience in international development and impact investing, Andrés is currently Chief Investment Officer of URAPI Sustainable Land Use, an impact fund managed by Ecotierra Inc. His previous experience includes advising both project developers and investors of forestry and agroforestry projects in Latin America as principle of a boutique consultancy firm, as well as investment manager for two successful and innovative carbon projects in Peru, and for a London based private-equity firm focused on environmental, sustainable forestry and agroforestry projects. Prior to this, he worked as a junior economist for the World Bank’s Treasury in Washington DC. Andrés holds an MA in International Relations with specialization in international finance from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC and a BA in Economics from Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, Peru.
Advisors
Juan Chang Olivas
Juan Chang has been a senior specialist in forest and land use at the Green Climate Fund (GCF) since 2015. He previously served for four years as senior specialist in forests and climate change for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in charge of promoting and coordinating climate change investments in forestry and land use sector in Latin America. Prior to joining the IDB, he worked as forestry and climate change auditor with the company TÜV-SÜD, where he audited climate change forestry projects in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America since 2007. Before becoming a forestry and climate change auditor, he worked in development and implementation of biodiversity conservation projects and management of protected areas in Peru accumulating more than 17 years of work experience.
Carolyn Seet
All charities are in need of someone who brings invaluable accountant and project management skills. And for that, PYF is fortunate to have Carolyn on their Advisory board. With many years experience working within the Fintech and banking industry, she has a exceptionally strong track record in finance, technology and business delivery.
Probono support team
Volunteers
Katie Butler-Manuel
Chloe Tonkin
Jenny Oster Warriner
Hannah Tranter
Simon Calder
Naomi Patterson
Logo Design
Sofia Garcia Noriega
Valentina Lopez
Legal Support
Photography
Taking Pictures, Changing Lives is an organisation that raises funds through crowdfunding activities to provide charities with photographers and videographers at no cost. In August 2018, Adam Dickens travelled to Peru to visit our project, and was able to capture a catalog of photography and video clips that are now being used across our website and social media channels.