Dr Maria DIGIANO

Program Officer, Andes-Amazon Initiative, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

As a program officer within the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Andes-Amazon Initiative, Maria leads strategic grant making in the Andean Region. She is an environmental anthropologist with over two decades of experience as a researcher and practitioner at the intersection of environmental conservation, sustainable development and human well-being. Previously, Maria worked as a scientist at Earth Innovation Institute where she led multi-stakeholder processes to strengthen engagement for indigenous peoples and local communities in forest conservation policies in the tropics. She has also worked as a researcher with Stanford University’s Social Ecology Lab and as a consultant to organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. Maria DiGiano holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary ecology with a concentration in anthropology from the University of Florida, and a B.A. in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.