Dr. Jill Blockhus

Dr. Jill Blockhus is an environmental policy leader and strategic advisor on social and environmental topics related to jurisdictional climate and forest programs (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD+). She leads AWF’s engagement with Nordic governments and global financial institutions, building strategic relationships and partnerships that help advance African-led conservation and development. Her work focuses on identifying opportunities to mobilize resources and develop innovative financing approaches that support AWF’s mission and the local communities at the heart of its work. Previously, she served as Director of International Partnerships at The Nature Conservancy, where she mobilized significant climate finance and led high-impact partnerships with governments and the World Bank to scale jurisdictional low-carbon forest and land-use programs.

While at the World Bank, she led a multi-country research strategy to reduce the vulnerability of forest-dependent peoples. She helped create the Forest Sector Support Program in Vietnam and managed several Global Environmental Facility biodiversity grants. Prior to the World Bank, she served as a Program Officer for the Forest Conservation Program at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), where she developed and managed forest conservation and development projects in Asia and advanced research on non-timber forest products with CIFOR. Jill holds an MBA from the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen, Norway; an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Ph.D. in International Environmental Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).