Francis Vorhies
Francis (or Frank) is the Executive Director of Earthmind. He has over 20 years of international experience as a sustainability economist. In 2006, Frank followed his wife’s career back to Geneva, Switzerland, and set up Earthmind as a not-for-profit professional sustainability association.
Since then he has worked on a variety of sustainability issues primarily related to the interface between business, the economy and biodiversity. In this regard, he has partnered with public, private and not-for-profit organisations including the CBD Secretariat, Credit Suisse, Danone, EC, EIB, EON, GEF, the Global Mechanism, the Governments of the Netherlands and Kuwait, ILO, ITC, IUCN, PERSGA, Shell, the Stockholm Convention, UNDP, UNEP, UNCTAD, UN/ISDR, the World Bank and Yemen LNG.
Previous experience includes:
• in Oxford, serving as the chief executive officer of the European affiliate of the Earthwatch Institute, managing a unique partnership programme with a group of 40 large multinational corporations
• in Geneva, establishing new global programmes on economics and business for IUCN, including undertaking joint feasibility studies with the IFC on investing in biodiversity business in Africa and Central Europe
• in Nairobi, working for the African Wildlife Foundation under a UNDP/GEF grant to build biodiversity economics capacity in the forestry sector in East Africa
• in Johannesburg, setting up Eco Plus, an innovative consultancy focused on business, economics and the environment, and also ran the first MBA course in the country on environmental management
Frank has a PhD and MA in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a diploma in integrated environmental management from the University of Cape Town.
