-: 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.