Corporate Communications and Marketing Manager, IUCN-SA
Tzila says she became an environmentalist in her first year at high school. ‘We had a passionate geography teacher who reinforced this message all the time.”
After school, she spent a year in Israel, where she studied geography, botany and Biblical ecology. Then she did a BSc in geography, zoology and environmental management at Rand Afrikaans University, followed by an MSc in environmental science at University of London. She is currently doing a second MSc in sustainable development.
‘I joined IUCN in 2002 to help set up the World Summit, mainly dealing with environmental policy and also formulating criteria for aspects like procurement and ensuring the event was run according to environmental best practice.” Tzila continued working at IUCN and has recently been seconded by DEAT to pull together a national environmental awareness campaign.
‘My career aim is to promote environmental responsibility, through communications and marketing. It is imperative the environmental movement uses these tools more aggressively to ensure behaviour change and publicise the issues that we in the field deal with daily,” she says. ‘If the public was more aware of the risks to human sustainability due to environmental degradation, there would be more of an active lobby towards promoting best practice.”