Helga Rainer

Director || Arcus Foundation’s Great Ape and Gibbon Program

Helga is a Director in the Arcus Foundation’s Great Ape and Gibbon Program. She leads the foundation’s engagement in relation to conservation of apes in situ. She has over 20 years of experience in natural resource management, research, and project development in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Her work has included research on urban environment projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as linkages between health of refugees and environmental degradation in Kenya. She has served as the Uganda Country Program Officer/Regional Policy Advisor for the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and African Wildlife Foundation, where she strengthened community participation in conservation, contributed to the development of a national tourism policy and implemented regional conservation strategies. Helga has a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science where she researched the role of conservation in armed conflict. She is also the lead editor for the State of the Apes report, the world’s first publication series looking at threats and dangers facing great apes and gibbons in every region where they live.

Other Speakers

Dr. Inza Koné

President, African Primatological Society || Director General of the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, Côte d’Ivoire