Dr. Nina Bhola

Vice Chair

Dr. Nina Bhola (Vice-Chair, appointed 2026) is a biodiversity, conservation and policy specialist who brings experience of working with intergovernmental, governmental, non-governmental partners across the world, including leading international collaborations, managing diverse partners and supporting effective international policy processes. Nina is currently a Deputy Head of Digital Transformation at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP – WCMC), where she works with a global team of experts to develop, resource and deliver a portfolio of biodiversity-related projects. While at UNEP-WCMC Nina’s achievements include fundraising and successfully delivered an $8 million, multi-partner project on ‘Sustainable fisheries management and marine biodiversity conservation in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction’; participating in the United Nations Inter-governmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction in New York; leading and facilitating a panel of experts at a Conference on Ocean Governance in South Africa; and coordinating international meetings bringing together over 100s of experts to help ensure effective use of knowledge in developing the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

Nina has a lifelong passion for the environment and is motivated by working in collaboration with people across the world. She brings a unique combination of science, project management and policy skills and her focus is on scaling up area-based conservation across marine and terrestrial ecosystems. She has a Ph.D. in biodiversity conservation from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Prior to this, she spent 5 years working with the World Wide Fund for Nature and as a researcher at The International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya, where she designed and implemented a range of sampling techniques and monitoring surveys for counting African mammals which led to 18 peer-reviewed publications with world-renowned ecologists.