<< All Initiatives
Initiative Home Team Publications Events Events (Español) Media Coverage Blog Posts

Team Members

Angel Soto

Deputy Director of Operations and FinanceForest Trends Peru

Angel has over 20 years of experience in finance and operations with international nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining Forest Trends, he held the position of Senior Manager, Global Administration at Rainforest Alliance, where he led all operational aspects of the organization in the Latin America region. Before Rainforest Alliance, Angel worked at Conservation International (CI) as the Operations Director for Mexico and Central America, where he led efforts implement financial and operational strategies for the region. He also worked at Save the Children Guatemala, leading financial and operational functions for USAID funded projects.

Mia Sakura Smith

Program ManagerGlobal Water Initiative

Mia is a registered Civil Engineer with over a decade of experience in water engineering and nature-based solutions (NbS) in watersheds across Latin America and California. She recently served as lead author and project manager for the most comprehensive global report tracking investments in NbS for water, and led monitoring and evaluation for a $52 million USAID-funded project scaling natural infrastructure investments in Peru. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Engineering from MIT and is fluent in English, Spanish, and Japanese. She was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and is currently based in Mexico City.

Gena Gammie

DirectorGlobal Water Initiative

Gena Gammie is the Director of Forest Trends’ Global Water Initiative, which aims to scale up incentives and other economic tools that recognize the value of nature and upstream communities in assuring secure, safe water. In this role Gena works collaboratively with civil society, government, and professional associations to systematically address barriers to realizing effective watershed investments and leads Forest Trends’ work on analyses and tools for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of green infrastructure, with the aim of promoting performance-based investments in green infrastructure by mainstream water resources managers. Gena brings to this role experience on forest carbon project development and analysis, climate policy analysis with ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, and strategic communication at McKinsey & Company’s Sustainability and Resource Productivity practice. Gena holds an MSc with Distinction in Environmental Policy & Regulation from the London School of Economics, where her dissertation focused on multi-stakeholder platforms for cooperative water resources management.