Niyanta Spelman
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Niyanta Spelman is the founder and executive director of Rainforest Partnership. Between 2000 and 2007, Niyanta owned PPPMC Inc, a public sector-oriented management consultancy. Niyanta’s broad public sector experience includes working for the Legislative Budget Board, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Texas Legislature, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe located in Budapest, Hungary, and the first lobbying firm in London, England.

Niyanta currently serves on the board of the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum, based in San Francisco. She was a founding member of Texas Federation of Asian American Chambers of Commerce, served for several years on the Austin Zoning & Platting and Planning Commissions and on the boards of various nonprofit organizations.

Niyanta grew up in Tanzania and lived in India and England before coming to Texas 25 years ago. She received a B.A. in biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a Masters degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. She and her husband Bill Spelman, a UT professor and an Austin city council member, live in Austin and have two sons, Jasiel and Ronan.

Maurine Winkley
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
Maurine recently returned to her hometown, Austin, after 8 years in California and Latin America. She has been the director of operations for Rainforest Partnership for the past year, and largely responsible for managing the organization’s trajectory. In both professional and academic experience, she has sought opportunities to combine her passion for entrepreneurship and finance with her desire to create lasting economic alternatives to environmental destruction. Specific focal areas have been in carbon finance, financial analysis and international business management. Her experience spans both the non-profit and privates sectors and includes two businesses she started, managed and sold.

She received her MBA in international management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and her bachelor’s in Global Economics from the University of California – Santa Cruz. Part of her studies were completed at the Universidad Pontificia Catolica in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has also traveled, worked and/or studied in Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama, and thus speaks Portuguese and Spanish.

Lucia Eslava
PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Lucia Eslava, a native of Lima, Peru, has been helping Rainforest Partnership (RP) since April 2008, traveling with RP Executive Director, Niyanta Spelman, and Board Chair, Hazel Barbour, to rainforest communities in central Peru and acting as the point person with RP’s potential partner communities.

Lucia graduated from the National University Agraria La Molina (UNALM) in Lima with a Bachelor of Forestry Science. Her experience includes forestry work in different areas of Peru: georeferencing and reporting illegally disturbed areas for extraction of the Caoba (Swettenia) tree in the National Park of Pacaya Samiria, Iquitos; working with the Peruvian NGO CIMA to georeference areas where the Piazaba palm grows in the forests of the native community of Chipaota; and providing environmental education in Chipaota and nearby communities.

Lindsey Engelman
AUSTIN-BASED PROJECT COORDINATOR
Lindsey is the Austin-Based Project Coordinator and the most recent member of our team. She obtained her BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and completed her dual masters degree in Latin American Studies and Community & Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin. Lindsey has studied, worked, and traveled throughout Latin America. In her graduate studies, she had the opportunity to participate in development and human rights research in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador and conducted her thesis research in a refinery town in the northwestern province of Ecuador. Lindsey also spent a year living in a rural, indigenous town in Guatemala while working as a human rights accompanier and spent nine months interning for Rainforest Partnership before joining our staff.

Daniel (Jaso) Angulo Rojas
REGIONAL MANAGER, SAN MARTIN, PERU
Daniel is a forestry engineer from the San Martin region of Peru. Daniel studied at the National Agrarian University La Molina in Lima and his professional experience includes working with natural resources and native communities. Daniel has worked for CIMA (Center for Conservation, Investigation and Management of Natural Areas) in the Chazuta region, specifically as the coordinator of projects in the National Park Cordillera Azul (PNCAZ).

Norma Verde
PROJECT MANAGER, COLIBRI CLOUDFOREST
Norma Lecca Zapata received her bachelor’s degree in forestry science at the Natural Agrarian University La Molina in Lima. As a student she specialized in silviculture of tree nurseries and forest plantations. She has experience with herb production, and the organic agriculture network, ONG, where she organized and participated in agroforestry market workshops, and organic food production and healthy cooking workshops. Norma has taught art and given ecological workshops to children including the use of natural dye in clothes and reforestation in a district of Lima. Norma also assisted the development of a workshop for gender equality and strategies to address the challenges and goals for women’s rights.

Noe Ushiñahua Panduro
FIELD COORDINATOR, CHIPAOTA ARTISAN & PIASSABA PROJECT
A native of San Martín Perú, Noe graduated as a technical forester of the North Eastern Technological Institute of the Jungle in Tarapoto. Noe has field work experience with communities living in rural areas, specifically while working as a ranger in the Upper Ponaza in PNCAZ, as a field technician for CIMA in PNCAZ, and as a technician for CEDISA (Center for Development and Investigation of the Highland Jungle) concerning field assessments for the project REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). He has a degree in environmental health, and project evaluation and formulation.

Eusebio Alanya Quinones
COMMUNITY COORDINATOR, COLIBRI CLOUDFOREST PROJECT
Eusebio is a natural leader from the community of Calabaza-Pampa Hermosa. With his wife, Melina, and two children, Eusebio lives in San Antonio and grows coffee in his chakra, like others in the community. With a special interest in ecotourism, Eusebio participated in an internship with Colibri Expeditions during which he traveled to Ecuador to learn more about ecotourism there. In September, 2010, Eusebio started working for RP as the local coordinator of the Colibri Cloudforest ecotourism project. Since 2011 he’s worked with Norma Lecca (Colibri Cloudforest’s Project Coordinator), villagers, and volunteers, to further develop the Colibri Cloudforest project. Eusebio is also a very hospitable host!

Hallie Brant
OFFICE MANAGER 

Hallie is a recent graduate of The University of Texas at Austin where she majored in English. A Houston native, she came to Austin in 2007, and then returned after graduating to volunteer at Rainforest Partnership. She became an employee in 2011 and is thrilled to be working with such an incredible team of people.