Dr Gladys Nominated for Prestigious Global Leadership Award

Groundbreaking conservationist Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka — who leads specialized mountain gorilla tracking for Adventure Consults in southern Uganda — is among the seven finalists for the 2020 Tällberg Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.

The Tällberg Prize — named for renowned Swedish diplomat and United Nations leader Jan Eliasson — is given annually to outstanding leaders from any country and any discipline whose work is innovative, courageous, rooted in universal values and global in implication.

“Dr. Gladys’ passion is an inspiration, as she works tirelessly to bring to the world’s attention the importance of a One Health approach to conservation, which recognizes these links and creates programs that foster synergies between conservation and public health, for the mutual benefit of all,” reads a statement released by the Tällberg Foundation.

Concerned about the health of both mountain gorillas and the humans living in close proximity to the primates, Kalema-Zikusoka founded Conservation Through Public Health in 2004 as a way to research and promote conservation by improving the quality of life of both people and wildlife to enable them to coexist in and around protected areas in Africa.

She recently became a National Geographic Explorer and winner of the Sierra Club’s 2018 EarthCare Award. She was also a finalist for the 2919 Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, the 2020 Uganda Veterinary Association World Veterinary Day Award and the 2020 Aldo Leopold Award. She is on the leadership council of Women for the Environment in Africa.

The Tällberg Foundation will announce three winners in November. Each will receives $50,000 — made possible by the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and engagement with a network of leaders committed to moving our societies from what they are to what they could be. See a full list of finalists here.

The women and men nominated for this year’s award “are changing a world that needs to be changed,” says Tällberg Foundation chairman Alan Stoga. “The jury wanted their selections not only to reflect the complexity and danger of the crises facing the world, but also the resourcefulness and resilience needed to confront those challenges. All of them are working for the same goal: to make a dark world brighter.”