Anahita Yousefi
Founder & Executive Director
Anahita is a forest and climate expert with over a decade of experience working on international climate change policy, focusing on initiatives aimed at reducing deforestation in developing countries. She has held senior positions with the Government of Norway, where she led several bilateral partnerships with Latin American forest countries. She served as the Government of Norway’s Special Envoy on Climate and Forests to Brazil, directing the flagship 1 billion USD partnership with the Amazon Fund, Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), and leading the dialogue with the Brazilian government and civil society.
At the Norway’s Climate and Forest Initiative, she developed the Ministry’s strategy on private sector and supply chain work for partnerships in forest countries like Liberia, Peru, Colombia and Indonesia. She also directed efforts to establish a secretariat for the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 at the World Economic Forum.
In recent years, she has worked on corporate supply chains, undertaking corporate campaigns and legal strategies focused on agricultural giants driving deforestation. First as Latin America campaign Director at Mighty Earth and later at Rainforest Foundation Norway, where she established work focused on European markets, in particular Germany, France and Spain, as well as work with the European Union. Her investigations and campaigns have been featured in many publications including Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El País, The Guardian , The New York Times and Corriere della Sera .
She has also worked on financial sector strategies to align portfolios with biodiversity and climate goals. She worked for the largest private Asset Manager in Norway, Storebrand, focused on developing digital deforestation-risk assessment to implement their goal to have a deforestation-free investment portfolio.
Anahita holds an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford and a B.A. from the University of Oslo.
Joana Faggin
Program Director
Joana is an expert in forest governance, land rights, community forestry, rural development, and sustainable supply chains, with more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of social, environmental, and economic issues. Her work focuses on how global commodity markets shape land use, deforestation, and the rights and livelihoods of local communities, particularly in Brazil’s Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes.
She has worked with grassroots movements, government institutions, international organisations, and NGOs. She began her career with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), supporting participatory planning in agrarian reform settlements, and later joined Brazil’s National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), where she worked on sustainable development initiatives in forest regions.
Joana also developed participatory projects with Quilombola communities in the state of Pará and worked in a joint project of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment to prepare a sustainable development plan for the BR-163 corridor, a major driver of land-use change in the Amazon. She later coordinated the National Community Forest Management Programme at the Brazilian Forest Service, supporting sustainable forest management led by traditional and local communities in protected areas and agrarian reform settlements.
After completing her PhD in Social Sciences at Wageningen University, she was a Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the Deforestation-Free Supply Chains team at Aidenvironment in Amsterdam, leading research and strategic initiatives to promote sustainable and inclusive supply chains, combining field-based knowledge with analysis of corporate practices, public policies, and regulatory frameworks. At Harvest, she supports initiatives focused on ecosystem conservation, human rights, climate action, and accountability, combining rigorous research, systems thinking, and strategic advisory work to advance environmental integrity and social justice.
Joana holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Wageningen University & Research (2018) and a Master’s degree in Sustainable Development from the University of Brasília (2009).
