Topic: Essential CTF Functions – Avoiding Trouble: A Scaled Approach to an Environmental and Social Risk Management System (ESMS) for use by Conservation Trust Funds
Hours: 16:00-17:00 (Mozambique Time)
Day: Thursday, October 07, 2021
Panelist: Kathy Mikitin

Position: Author

Kathy Mikitin was the principle author of the Issues and Options paper which in 1994 launched the concept of Conservation Trust Funds as institutions created to support financial sustainability for biodiversity conservation. She is also co-author of the original Practice Standards for Conservation Trust Funds that were issued in 2014. During her 30-Year career in the World Bank she designed development projects in the education, transportation, power and environmental sectors and contributed to the launch of the Global Environment Facility. She influenced change within the World Bank by developing policies and procedures for mainstreaming GEF operations in Bank projects and, as a member of the Internal Auditing Department, by reviewing the Bank’s vast portfolio of trust fund sourced grants.  After leaving the Bank, Kathy was able to resume what she is most passionate about: promoting and supporting Conservation Trust Funds.

Over the past 12 years, Kathy has worked with more than twenty CTFs in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. She has assisted Boards of both very mature and nascent Environmental Funds to improve their governing documents, organize for efficiency and effectiveness, adopt governance norms and best practices to operate capably and in compliance with laws and internal regulations. This was done through transfer of knowledge sessions, board self-assessments, institutional evaluations, cross-cutting studies and work with donors and national design committees to arrive at legally sound and nationally appropriate governance structures and frameworks. Kathy has also worked with Conservation Trust Fund chief executives and mid-level managers to put in place the management tools required to be effective executors of their Board’s strategic and operating decisions.