Strategy Analyst for the Global Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Program, The Nature Conservancy

My name is Alison Martin and I work for the Nature Conservancy which is an environmental non-profit. My team specifically works in partnership with indigenous peoples in local communities to support them in their priorities for conserving natural resources and lands and waters that they have access to. What that looks like for me personally is I have a strong link with our Latin America program so I focus a lot on our work in Brazil. I was living there for a little bit, embedded with the team. In order to be a better goal partner, I helped them with strategic planning, with project management related to their work on the ground. Another aspect of my work, I'm focused on gender equity and integration and supporting our programs to work on that within a culturally appropriate context. It's not the same everywhere; in fact, it's quite different in many places, especially in different indigenous cultures but it's still something that needs to be touched upon and worked on in our work to make sure that we're furthering equity and empowerment of women. And then finally, I work on the human rights side of things so focused on taking indigenous rights in alignment with international standards and making sure that we're applying those best practices and those requirements and commitments in our work. I'm trying to form a nascent network so day-to-day that could look like hosting a call, mainly with my Latin America colleagues, and I have colleagues that work on the Asia Pacific and Africa side of things. And then what that's rolling up into is we're currently planning for an in-person meeting where we can bring everyone together and have these learnings and experiences. So one of the really concrete things that I'm doing from day-to-day right now is trying to plan this meaningful gathering that's not only deploying training but also has a lived experience together as practitioners and as colleagues, as people around the world. And then also planning for these more near-term goals that are leading up to that, so organizing calls, leading the calls, creating concept notes with evidence to support some of these projects that they're doing on the ground that they might benefit from having more of a broad background to make the case and support what they're doing in the meantime before we all get together.