Helen Macdonald – Chairperson
"Conservation, cultural understanding and animal welfare are the three pillars of ethical falconry. To me, they are why the work of EFFC is so important in today’s fast-changing world."
Helen Macdonald is a falconer, naturalist and internationally renowned writer. She is best known for her best-selling 2014 memoir H is for Hawk, which depicted the training of a goshawk following her father's death. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, the Costa Book Award and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and has been translated into 24 languages. Ms Macdonald is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and also writes and presents television documentaries, including 2017's H is for Hawk: A New Chapter (BBC Natural World and PBS Nature). She has been a falconer since 1983, and while she has worked in raptor conservation, domestic breeding and education, her first love is falconry in the field.
Allen Sangines-Krause, Ph.D
“A true falconer does not only hunts with hawks. A true falconer is a conservationist at heart whose love of birds of prey extends to all their surrounding environment.”
Allen Sangines-Krause is founding partner of BK Partners, a firm focused on private equity and real estate investments. Formerly, Mr Sangines-Krause held several leading positions in Goldman Sachs International (Advisory Director, Member of the Firmwide Commitments Committee, Managing Director, Head of Emerging Markets, Investment Banking Division, head of Russia and CIS, co-head of General Industrials-Europe and of the Spanish Team), and Goldman Sachs & Co (Managing Director, COO of the Latin American Group with responsibility for all investment banking business in the region). He is Chairman Emeritus of the Council of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, a member of the Campaign Board of the Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Mr Sangines-Krause holds a BA in Economics Summa cum Laude by Instituto Técnologico Autónomo de México and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. The dissertation was entitled Interest Groups and Economic Performance and received the Banamex prize in Economics for 1987.
H.E. Mohammed Ahmed Al Bowardi
“The danger is that in becoming urban and technology-based, we fail to care for nature, so that one day nature will fail to care for us. Falconry has enabled us to hold on to that link, not just with the past, but with nature herself.”
H.E. Mohammed Ahmed Al Bowardi is Minister of State for Defence of the United Arab Emirates. As well as being Managing Director of the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency, he is also Deputy Chairman of the Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund and the International Fund for Houbara Conservation, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of Abu Dhabi University (ADU). His commitment to conservation work has garnered him several international awards, including the Sir Peter Scott Award for Conservation Merit at the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC), 2015, Environmental Personality Award by Zayed International Foundation for Environment (2015), and the Abu Dhabi Award (2007). Outside of conservation, His Excellency is a member of the Mubadala Investment Company’s Board of Directors and of its Executive Committee, Chairman of the Committee for Developing and Implementing the Water and Agriculture Strategy for Abu Dhabi, Vice Chairman of Dolphin Energy and a board member of Tawazun Holding.
J. Peter Jenny
“Opportunities to directly interact with wildlife have become all too rare as our society becomes increasingly divorced from our natural world. As both a falconer and a raptor biologist, I have been privileged to work hands-on with wild birds of prey and these experiences have been of inestimable value to our ability to implement effective conservation.”
After serving 11 years as its President and CEO, Peter Jenny retired from The Peregrine Fund, an organisation he has been a key component of since its foundation. In 1970, he accompanied founding director Robert Berry to the eastern Canadian Arctic to collect some of the first Peregrine Falcons to be used for the project’s captive breeding and went on to manage one of the early release sites on the Susquehanna River. After graduating from the University of Montana with a degree in Zoology, Mr Jenny pioneered The Peregrine Fund’s involvement in the Neotropics with his research on the rare Orange-breasted Falcon and subsequently co-founded the Maya Project to study the ecology of tropical raptors at a community level. During his 18-year tenure as The Peregrine Fund’s Vice President, he divided his time between managing the Northern Aplomado Falcon Restoration Project and overall programme development. A staunch advocate of collaborative approaches to conservation and private sector participation, Mr Jenny secured more than 2million acres of private land in support of wild falcon recovery and was instrumental in gaining federal and state approval for the resumption of a peregrine harvest for falconry in the US. Besides falconry, his other passions include English Setters, fly-fishing, sailing, and flying his restored 1947 Stinson.