Program Directors

Our Program Directors have decades of experience working to protect some of the world's most threatened wildlife and habitats.

Suwanna Gauntlett - Cambodia Country Director 

Suwanna's name is practically synonymous with wildlife conservation in Cambodia. Around the world, she has helped save marine turtles in India, protected the Galápagos Islands' sharks, and established anti-poaching operations to protect Siberia's tigers. In Cambodia, she has helped to save more than 32,000 live animals from smugglers and poachers, preserve the largest intact forest in mainland Southeast Asia, and revitalize the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center for animals saved from the illegal wildlife trade. For her efforts, Suwanna has been awarded honors by Prime Minister Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia.  

Nick Marx - Cambodia Wildlife Rescue Director

Nick Marx is Wildlife Alliance's Wildlife Rescue Director and Senior Animal Husbandry Specialist at the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center in Cambodia. He holds a master's degree in Conservation Biology and has more than thirty years of experience in animal care, especially with large wildlife. His animal experience includes large predators (tigers, lions, cheetahs, leopards), primates (orangutans, gibbons), elephants, and other mammals. He has worked in park management, wildlife conservation, and animal care in the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. He advises the Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team on dealing with human-animal conflicts and providing care for animals rescued from the illegal wildlife trade. He has lectured and published broadly on wildlife conservation and animal husbandry. He directs the gibbon rehabilitation program at PTWRC as well.

Steve Galster - Thailand Country Director

In neighboring Thailand, Steve Galster has been at the center of efforts to save tigers, clouded leopards, wild elephants, and other endangered creatures for decades. As chief of party for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) support program, he works to help the governments of Southeast Asia enforce wildlife protection laws and treaties, to ensure that Asia's wildlife are protected for the benefit of future generations. Previously, he worked on undercover wildlife crime investigations in Afghanistan, Russia, and West Africa, busting poaching and smuggling rings and stopping crimes against nature. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, CNN’s Planet in Peril, and other international media as well as the recent Animal Planet UK documentary series, Crime Scene Wild.

Sergei Bereznuk - Program Director, Phoenix Fund 

Siberian (Amur) tigers are the largest and among the most critically endangered of the seven surviving tiger sub-species, and no one has done more to protect them than Sergei Bereznuk. He and his team at the Phoenix Fund, which was set up with assistance from Suwanna and Steve, prevent poaching of tigers and leopards and work to build support for conservation throughout the Russian Far East. For his efforts, including relocating an environmentally hazardous oil pipeline away from critical leopard habitat, Sergei won the £30,000 Whitley Award for outstanding achievements in nature conservation.