OUR TEAM

Staff

  • Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance that advocates for reproductive autonomy, ecocentrism, and degrowth. She also co-hosts the popular interview series The Overpopulation Podcast at Population Balance.

    She is an adjunct faculty at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University, where she teaches about the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

    Her work has appeared in major news outlets including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Inter Press News, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and National Post. She has a Master's degree in Humane Education from Antioch University, a Bachelor's degree in Education from University of Toronto, and a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Toronto Metropolitan University.

    She was born and raised in India and has lived in Toronto, Canada for over 25 years.

  • Kirsten has worked for over two decades for nonprofit organizations focusing on conserving wildlife, challenging extractive industries on public lands, and defending the integrity of regulatory science.

    She has published research on the impacts of livestock grazing on fire ecology and ecosystem health in the American west, and has a Master's degree in Conservation Biology from Columbia University and a Bachelor's in Earth Systems from Stanford University.

    She has volunteered internationally and domestically in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, and is an active foster and volunteer in animal rescue in and around the Washington, DC metro area. Kirsten operates a holistic dog grooming business and plays percussion with medieval and folk rock bands.

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  • Alan has worked part-time with Population Balance since 2008 as researcher, writer, and speaker, and recently started co-hosting the podcast. His education included work in political science as an undergraduate and public policy and education at the graduate level. In addition to advocating for a more sustainable population, he follows the unfolding and interrelated financial, energy, environmental, and social/political crises. He has sung and played guitar for decades, and he's currently taken an interest in learning much more about the flora and fauna in his local bioregion.

  • Aneeha is a nonprofit operations consultant and engineer. She helps organizations set up, improve and run their back-offices so that they can focus on their core missions. Aneeha has consulted for several leading organizations of all sizes–from multinational NGOs to small startups–and has saved them thousands of hours and dollars by streamlining their operations departments. Prior to her consulting work, Aneeha directed vegan education and institutional meat-reduction programs for an international nonprofit and worked in business technology consulting. Some of the causes closest to her heart are animal rights, gender and racial equity, and global health.

  • Elisabeth is a a professional software developer and graphic designer who grew up in Germany. Several years ago, she donated most of her belongings to charity and has been what the internet calls a digital nomad ever since. Slowly moving around Europe, she has been exploring different ways of life and culture. She is childfree by choice and passionate about freeing people's minds of the restrictive corset that is pronatalist thinking. As a software engineer she dedicates her professional work to green tech in the hope of making a difference in the fight against environmental decline.

  • Juliana is a Colombia-based activist and educator with degrees in biomedical engineering and sustainable development. She has been the director of RAYA, an animal protection nonprofit, for more than 21 years. She has been directing and co-hosting ¡Ládralo!, a podcast about animal rights, for 10 years. She also co-hosts a new podcast called Ojos del Bosque about planetary issues including human supremacism, ecological degradation, biodiversity extermination, and pollution. Juliana teaches environmental science at Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano and is the coordinator of the Social and Legal Animal Defense Program in the Law and Political Sciences Faculty at Universidad de Antioquia. Committed to preserving life on Earth, Juliana seeks to inspire her students and social media followers by living her values and advocating for a more compassionate and just world. You can listen to our interview with her here.

  • Josh is an audio engineer and musician from the UK. He's been playing guitar for over 10 years and first got his start in the industry playing at local gigs in his hometown where he also attended The Academy Of Music And Sound, graduating in 2018. Since then, he's channeled his passion for music into understanding the more technical side of audio by studying recording, editing, mixing and mastering and has been working in audio for over 5 years. Josh loves the podcasting format, so combined with his love of educational content and discussion, he was eager to work alongside and learn from the many insights and stories of those on The Overpopulation Podcast.

Board of Directors

  • Eileen taught in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech for 22 years, retiring in 2020. Her work focuses on the biodiversity crisis and destruction of wild places, pathways to halt these trends, and ways forward toward creating an ecological civilization. She is coeditor of a number of books, including Gaia in Turmoil (2011) and Keeping the Wild (2015). She has authored and coauthored numerous academic papers as well as popular writings. She is Associate Editor of the online journal The Ecological Citizen and blogger for Earth Tongues. Her most recent book, Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2019. For more information and publications, visit her website and listen to our podcast interview with her.

  • Lukas serves as the board chair of Population Balance. He’s worked for many environmental causes, from fisheries protection with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to organizing protests against mangrove ecosystem destruction in Mexico. Currently, Lukas is a nurse on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. He carries a strong clinical knowledge base, with an interest in sexual and reproductive health. He holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado and a MS in Nursing from the University of Arizona.

  • Andrew Kyamagero is a multi-talented award-winning news anchor of NTV Uganda. He is the CEO and Founder of Omuntu Wawansi, a not-for-profit organization working to advance effective involvement of men and boys in all spheres of life, across communities in Uganda. Andrew has been appointed as the esteemed National Family Planning and Male Involvement Champion by the Ministry of Health, entrusted with the responsibility of spearheading efforts to enhance health outcomes and promote gender equity throughout Uganda. He holds a Masters in Mass Communication from Amity University India and a Bachelors degree in Mass Communication from Kampala University. To learn more about Andrew, you can listen to our podcast interview with him.

  • Williane was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and has lived in the US for over 20 years. She has degrees in Political Science, and Nursing, and is currently working towards her Nurse Practitioner degree in Women's Health. She has been deeply involved with social justice issues for decades, including working with Doctors Without Borders and the Association of Haitian Women in Boston. After recognizing that much of her efforts in addressing the myriad of social inequities were rooted in reproductive inequities and population growth, Williane shifted her focus to family-planning education and now works to support disadvantaged women take control of their bodies and fertility. You can watch our short video interview with her here.

  • Zee Berl has accumulated over 50 years’ experience working in the nonprofit conservation field, as either staff or Board member. She has headed regional land and river organizations and has serves as an organizational consultant for numerous groups throughout the US. She is the Director and Operations Manager for the Gaia Earth Balance Foundation, which focuses on the Earth’s sustainability.

Board of Advisors

  • Dr Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His research focuses on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability. He is best known as the originator and co-developer of ‘ecological footprint analysis, a quantitative tool that shows definitively that the human enterprise is in dysfunctional overshoot. Frustrated by political unresponsiveness to worsening indicators, Dr Rees also studies the bio-behavioral and psycho-cognitive barriers to environmentally rational political policies and programs. He is a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute; a founding Director of the OneEarth Initiative; and a Director of The Real Green New Deal. A Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, Dr Rees’ international awards include the Boulding Memorial Award in Ecological Economics, the Herman Daly Award in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with Dr Mathis Wackernagel).

  • Mary Pat is the director of graduate programs at the Institute for Humane Education and faculty at Antioch University. She holds an MA from New York University. Mary Pat has been in the field of education since 1979 when she began teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa. Before becoming part of the IHE team, she worked in refugee camps in Southeast Asia and supervised American culture and language programs for the World Trade Institute in New York City. Since 2002, she has directed and taught in IHE’s graduate programs first with Cambridge College, then Valparaiso University, and now at Antioch. She has served on numerous school and non-profit boards and is a longstanding member of the humane education anti-racism working group.

  • Amrita is a New Delhi-based researcher and writer whose work on gender, rights and culture has been published in national and international books, journals and newspapers. Her doctoral research on women’s choices vis-à-vis motherhood and mothering won her the Fox Fellowship at Yale University (2013-2014) and is the subject of her book Motherhood and Choice. Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women (Zubaan and New Text, 2017). Winner of the 2015 Laadli National Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity, Amrita has a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and a Master’s from the University of Oxford, U.K. Currently, she works with human rights and feminist organizations and looks after her elderly parents and plants, while trying to fuse it all with the contemplative-spiritual.

  • Robert Engelman was the past President and now Senior Fellow of the Worldwatch Institute. As Vice President previously, Engelman wrote extensively on population and the environment, reproductive health, and climate change. Previously, he was Vice President for Research at Population Action International. A former newspaper reporter, Engelman has served on the faculty of Yale University as a visiting lecturer and was founding secretary of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The Population Institute, where he currently serves as a Senior Fellow as well, awarded his book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, the 2008 Global Media Award for Individual Reporting on Population. His writing has appeared in scientific journals and news media including Nature, Scientific American, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

  • Sofia was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico. She attended medical school there and, as a student, her dream was to help people as a doctor. She devoted a full decade of her life for medical training in that pursuit. Over time, however, her perspective changed on what she believes is most urgent. She has come to understand that humans - herself included - are literally destroying the planet on which we live. Humanity, she believes, is not only making the planet uninhabitable for human civilization, but also for countless other species with whom we share this world. She believes this is a crime like no other and feels a deep sense of concern, in particular, for all the other animals who are being decimated by human activities. In recent years, Dr. Pineda Ochoa has produced films that present information on environmental degradation, its causes and its consequences. To date, she has produced Endgame 2050, Humanity's Land-Grab Disaster. Vanishing Insects Spell Trouble for Humans, and The Betrayal of Ignoring Human Overpopulation.

  • Richard decided to work in the field of human population when in high school, in 1960. He has practiced medicine, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and in public health, in rural Colorado, where he was an abortion provider. He is also the author of the world’s only regular column on aspects of population; these essays are available at www.population-matters.org (don’t forget the hyphen!). He and Gail have been married 55 years and have 2 sons and 3 granddaughters. He hopes to be a medical resource for Population Balance.