Board

ETC Staff, Board and Friends in Strathmere Ontario - November 2011

ETC Board of Trustees

Tim Brodhead

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Tim is ETC Group's President. He is the Former President and CEO of the J.W. McConnell Foundation, and past Executive Director of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. In 2002, Tim was named an Officer of the Order of Canada the highest honour awarded to Canadian citizens.

Michael Hansen

Yonkers, NY, USA

ETC Group Secretary-Treasurer. Dr. Michael Hansen is a researcher and spokesperson for the Consumer Policy Institute, a division of the Consumers Union of the United States (the same organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine). Hansen currently works on biotechnology issues and has become a visible opponent to genetic engineering in agriculture. Despite his ideological biases, Hansen is frequently quoted by mainstream media outlets as an impartial scientific expert on the subject of mad cow disease. He is also the author of Biotechnology and Milk: Benefit or Threat?

Andrés Barreda

Mexico City, Mexico

Andrés is the General Coordinator of Centre for Social Analysis, Information and Popular Training (CASIFOP) in Mexico City. He holds full-time tenure at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), in the Faculty of Economics, teaching Political Economy and Critical Geopolitics. He has participated in several research projects, in collaboration with social movements, indigenous and workers organizations, as well as several research centres within the UNAM, and with other academic institutions.

Ruth Stegassy

Paris, France

Ruth Stegassy is a french journalist and a radio producer. She has been woorking with France Culture for more than 25 years. Since 2000, she host a one-hour radio programme about environment each Saturday entitled Terre-à-Terre. Throughout the years, she has been working on very different themes as agriculture, energy, food sovereignty, ecobuilding, pollution, water from a large range of angles (political, economical, philosophical, social, historical). She published in 2010 the book 'Sustainable Cities in Europe'. Ms. Stagassy is currently working on a book to be published in March 2012, the first of a serie of three, that will featured a collection of her most striking interviews.

Mariam Mayet

Richmond, South Africa

Mariam Mayet obtained a BA. LLB.LLM from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is the founder and director of the African Centre for Biosafety, a non-profit organisation, based in Johannesburg South Africa. The ACB provides authoritative, credible, relevant and current information, research and policy analysis on issues pertaining to genetic engineering, biosafety and biopiracy in Africa.

Ditdit Pelegrina

Los Banos, Laguna Philippines

Wilhelmina (Ditdit) R. Pelegrina - with a background in horticulture and environmental sciences - has been involved in community based work to advance sustainable farming in the Philippines and Southeast Asia since 1992. Former Executive Director of Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), a regional NGO, based in the Philippines.  SEARICE works with farmers, local government units, academic institutions and NGOs in Southeast Asia (including Bhutan) on practical/field work and on policy advocacy and campaigning work towards the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity and farmers’ rights as part of its contribution to agrarian reform struggles.

Ricarda A. Steinbrecher

Oxford, UK

Dr. Ricarda A. Steinbrecher is a biologist and geneticist. She has specialised in gene regulation since 1982 and has worked as a research scientist in the field of mutational analysis, gene identification and gene therapy in university and hospital settings. Since 1995 she has focused on genetic engineering in food and farming, its risks and potential consequences on health, food security and the environment. She received a first class honours M.Sc. (Dipl.rer.nat.) in biology with a focus on developmental biology at the University of Kiel, Germany and a Ph.D. in molecular genetics with focus on gene regulation at the University of London, UK. She is a member of the Federation of German Scientists and the British Society for Allergy, Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. At present she is Co-Director of EcoNexus, a not-for-profit public interest research organisation based in the UK.

Darrin Qualman

Saskatchewan, Canada

Darrin Qualman grew up on a farm in central Saskatchewan and farmed there with his family until the mid-1990s. From 1996 to 2010, he served first as the National Farmers Union’s Executive Secretary (Executive Director) and then as Director of Research.  His work with the NFU includes the publications The Farm Crisis and Corporate Profits;  The Structural Adjustment of Canadian Agriculture (with Nettie Weibe); and The Farm Crisis, Bigger Farms, and the Myths of “Competition” and “Efficiency.”  He took a lead role in many national campaigns, including ones to stop the introduction of genetically modified wheat; to create more locally-controlled food systems; and to explain and counter corporate power in the food system.  Darrin has a B.A. in Political Studies from the University of Saskatchewan, and he is currently working on a B.Sc. in Biology at that university.  His main work now is an impossibly ambitious book on civilization, energy, material flows, and ecology.  

Sergio Dario Arispe Barrientos

Bolivia

Sergio is a bolivian lawyer. His main area of expertise are social ecology (Thesis in environmental law), agrofuels, agricultural diversity and issues related to the construction of policies on food sovereignty. He is also a national representative in various international forums. Only in the last 5 years, Sergio has been Technical Advisor in the Committee on Agriculture, peasant, indigenous communities and ethnic groups in the Senate (2007-2008), Head of Socialization and Coordination of the Ministry of Water (April- September 2008), Project Manager for Community Tourism Development, Fremen Tours Andes and Amazonia, Uyuni (2009-2010), General Coordinator of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Environment and Water (February 2010 to June 2010), Director of the Interagency Coordinating Council for Water (CONIAG), Ministry of Environment and Water (July 2010 to December 2010), Official Delegate to the UNFCCC negotiations (2010), Food justice campaign officer. Oxfam Bolivia (2011).