Guillermo Castilleja is a Senior Advisor at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Guillermo’s time has been generously allocated by his foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to help the Global Alliance further its work on true cost accounting. Before being seconded to the Global Alliance, Guillermo, in his position as senior fellow at the Moore Foundation, advised the president on both internal analytics and external relations – providing foresight and judgement to aid in identifying future directions, as well as opportunities to elevate the foundation’s and grantees’ achievements. Guillermo served six years at the helm of the foundation’s Environmental Conservation Program, leading its efforts to protect critical ecosystems and balance long-term conservation with sustainable use.
Before joining the foundation in 2010, Guillermo worked for WWF for 18 years, most recently as executive director for conservation at WWF International. In that capacity, he directed and coordinated its global conservation efforts, leading the development of place-based and policy priorities for the global network. At the beginning of his career in WWF, he was country representative in Mexico and later vice-president for the Latin America and the Caribbean program. Guillermo has also worked for the World Bank and the National Wildlife Federation. He serves on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) Advisory Board, and the board of the Fondo Mexicano Para La Conservacion De La Naturaleza, A.C./Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, A.C. (FMCN). He was recently appointed special advisor to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. Previously, Guillermo was a member of Mexico’s National Commission on Protected Areas and the National Forestry Commission, as well as the board of directors of WWF Russia. Through speaking engagements around the world, research published in peer-reviewed journals and the media, Guillermo has addressed the relationship between protected areas and food security, strategies for long-term financing of large-scale land conservation, and the social opportunities and challenges of biodiversity conservation. Guillermo graduated from the National University of Mexico and received a master’s degree in forestry, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a doctorate in forest ecology from Yale University.
