Mathew Jacobson

Mathew Jacobson has more than two decades of experience in grantmaking, strategic planning, campaigning, communications, public opinion research, and government and corporate relations at the intersection of conservation, Indigenous rights, social justice, and sustainable livelihoods.

He has a record of achieving goals previously deemed impossible by bridging innovative strategic leadership with powerful coalition building, team building, grants management, and field mobilization in senior positions at Pew Charitable Trusts, MoveOn.org, Mighty Earth, and Greenpeace.

Highlights include

• Turning the notoriously rancorous forest protection movement into what the Sacramento Bee called a “carefully conducted choir” as co-director of the Heritage Forests Campaign for the creation and defense of the Roadless Rule.

• Building & leading a coalition campaign in another country, culture, and language, securing protection policies for an area in Quebec more than twice the size of the US National Park System.
• Working with Indigenous leaders from around the world to change the rules governing UNESCO’s World Heritage Program to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples, and to ascribe value to the interrelationship between nature and culture.

• Gaining the trust of a broad cross-section of leaders in rural Northern Manitoba – from Indigenous chiefs to mayors, chambers of commerce, industry, and conservationists – to build a successful coalition for the sustainable development of the Boreal Forest.
• Working at Meridian Institute as an integral part of the interim secretariat to launch the Nature Crime Alliance
• Establishing and directing Meridian Institute’s Strategic Support Center to provide coalition resources for legislation to prohibit the import to the EU of goods linked to deforestation.