Staff

Anne Gloor | Executive Director

Anne Gloor conceived of and founded PeaceNexus, together with Hansjörg Wyss, in 2008. She is currently also the Executive Director of the Foundation.

From 1999 to 2011, Anne worked for the Swiss Foreign Ministry where she was involved in several issues related to Peace Policy. She has designed peace promotion programs in Southern Africa and assisted implementation of the programs during two years in Mozambique. She has assembled expertise in power-sharing, constitutional reforms, election-related conflict prevention, democratization, strengthening of civil society, mine action and development assistance. She also worked as a trainer, organizing and directing various courses in peacebuilding matters for different target groups. Between 2006 and 2008, during her tenure at the Swiss Foreign Ministry, Anne Gloor was seconded to the General Directorate for External Relations of the European Commission, to be in charge of election observation policy and operations in a number of countries. Prior to her work with the Swiss Foreign Ministry, Anne developed conflict management tools for the Swiss Red Cross and Amnesty International.

Anne Gloor studied in Switzerland, the USA, Colombia and France. Her main topics related to the theory of democracy and democracy building in Latin America (Nicaragua and Colombia), in the USA (the Reagan years), in France (the French concept of nation-building) and in Switzerland (foundation and impact of semi-direct democracy). Her research was based on multidisciplinary approaches, with emphasis on political history and political science.

Jenny Heap | Programme Manager

Jenny Heap is working on the interfaces between the business sector and peacebuilding. Jenny has direct and consultancy experience in a number of organizations and across a range of sectors. She has driven organizational change within the public and the INGO sectors, where she has held senior management positions, and has worked at the operational level, including with the private sector to ensure that day-to-day operations have a net positive environmental and social effect. She has held senior management positions with the UK public service and WWF International, and has worked with Oxfam International to coordinate work on climate change on food security, and with UN organizations on environmental performance and public engagement. Her work with the private sector has included the extractive industries, the water industry, forestry and agriculture.

Throughout her career Jenny’s focus has been on fostering cross-sectoral, cross-cultural multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development challenges. She convened networks of economists, environmental and social scientists, business sectors and government planners, to produce guidelines on operationalizing sustainable development, which influenced the UK’s strategy; has brought together different land-use interests to resolve land-use conflicts; and, steered inclusive national and international multi-stakeholder dialogue with the private sector in Africa. Within organizations she has initiated integrated approaches including partnerships with the private sector.

Jenny has British citizenship and spent much of her childhood in Africa. Since 1998 she has been based in Switzerland. She holds Masters Degrees in Agricultural Economics and in Systems in Management (soft systems analysis), and a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences, majoring in Ecology.

Lisa Ibscher | Programme Manager

Before joining PeaceNexus in 2012, Lisa Ibscher worked as a Peace Building Adviser of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, assisting the government of South Sudan in establishing Councils of Traditional Leaders as platforms for dialogue and conflict transformation. Her previous peacebuilding experience includes Nepal (2007-2010, Civil Peace Service), Sudan (2004-2005 Nuba Mountains Ceasefire Monitoring Mission) and Kosovo (2003, KFOR, NATO-led peacekeeping mission).

Before that, Lisa Ibscher worked for several years as a journalist, after completing her studies in journalism and education. With her interest in the peacebuilding field, she later completed a postgraduate degree in Development and Cooperation (NADEL, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and a comprehensive training in mediation (Swiss Development Cooperation and Inmedio Institute).

Igor Vorontsov | Programme Manager

Igor Vorontsov is a Program Officer with the PeaceNexus Foundation. Prior to this he worked in Uzbekistan as a Researcher for Human Rights Watch (2007-2009), focusing on advocacy, international human rights law and refugee protection, and in Guinea (Conakry) as a Technical Advisor for the International Rescue Committee (2006-2007), where he was responsible for methodology and partner relations, and facilitated an interagency committee that processed refugee cases and identified durable solutions for unaccompanied refugee children.

In 2003-2006 Igor served with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Europe and Middle East Region, as a Regional Technical Advisor for Advocacy and worked as part of the Social Change Unit. His thematic portfolio included human rights, child rights, democratic governance, citizen empowerment, human trafficking and protection of vulnerable groups. He was then based in Belgrade, Serbia, and traveled extensively across Balkans, South Caucasus and beyond to support staff and partners.

Prior to the Catholic Relief Services, Igor has completed assignments for ECPAT International in Thailand and Southern Africa, and a field internship with the OSCE Mission to the Republic of Croatia.

Igor grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he studied at the St.Petersburg State University and started his career in social work, advocacy and human rights education. In 1995, he became a Sociologist-Fieldwork Manager responsible for public opinion polls, but his continuous activism with Amnesty International and with street children projects lead him to study non-profit management, and since 1998 he served as Country Director (Russia) for the Christian Children’s Fund of Great Britain (CCFGB). In 2001 Igor earned a European Masters Degree in Human Rights and Democratization from the University of Padua in Italy; he also studied international human rights law at the Abo Akademi University in Finland.

K. Victor Henckel von Donnersmarck |
Programme Manager

K. Victor Henckel von Donnersmarck joined the Foundation in 2010 as Administrator and is now focusing on the nexus between peacebuilding and the private sector. He also supports the implementation and update of new systems and processes as the organization grows.

Prior to working with PeaceNexus, Victor was a consultant with the United Nations with a focus on Knowledge Management and has gathered experience in various other sectors. These include internships at UBS, a French IT start-up, a German Foundation working in the health care sector, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Bonn, Germany. During his studies in Milan, Italy, he founded a non-profit organization, which provides extracurricular education to students. In combination with this activity, he helped to create the first European Model UN network and was invited to the 5th session of the European Cultural Parliament in Sibiu, Romania. He also designed and teaches a course module for the CLAPI Master Program at the Bocconi University.

Victor is both a German and Swedish citizen and graduated with a Bachelor in International Economics and Management from Università Bocconi in 2007, and a Master of Public Management from SDA Bocconi in Milan, Italy, in 2010.

Dr Catriona Gourlay, Research & Knowledge Manager

Before joining PeaceNexus in 2012, Dr Catriona Gourlay worked as an independent consultant, providing research, analysis and training to help organisations working in conflict-affected contexts. From 2005 to 2009 she was the Marie Curie Research Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), where she conducted projects on EU and UN crisis management and peacebuilding.

Previously, from 1995 to 2005, she was the (founding) Executive Director of the International Security Information Service, Europe, an independent research organization based in Brussels working on European conflict prevention, peacebuilding and security policy. She has written extensively on the development of civilian crisis management and peacebuilding capacities and policies, and has provided research support, training facilitation, and policy advice for the European Commission, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UN Development Programme, a number of EU Member States and a range of Non Governmental Organisations active in peacebuilding.

She holds a PhD in International Relations from Lancaster University (UK), a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania (US) and a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford (UK).

Sabine Granger | Administrator

Sabine Granger joined PeaceNexus in January 2012.

Before this, she worked as an office manager and executive assistant in a financial company in Nyon, spent several years with WWF International, Gland, as a director’s assistant, and for twelve years held various administrative positions with different United Nations agencies (the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Geneva, and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at that time in Geneva).

Sabine is Austrian, speaks German, English, French and Spanish and has lived in Switzerland for over twenty years.