John-Rob is the Implementation Manager of Cities4Forests, a program housed in WRI’s Natural Infrastructure Initiative, where he oversees the day-to-day implementation of the project, working with the project’s Director and other senior leadership across WRI’s Water, Forests and Sustainable Cities programs. He leads the engagement of multiple cities in Africa, Europe and Latin America; works hand in hand with WRI’s International Offices in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, and Mexico; contributes to technical research and analysis; and supports fundraising efforts.

John-Rob is the focal point for engagement with Accra, Antananarivo, Bogotá, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kigali, Medellín, Nairobi, Santiago de Cali and Skopje. In this role, John-Rob works to cultivate awareness and spur action on the part of city governments and urban residents to protect, conserve, and restore trees and forests inside and outside city boundaries, and to harness the previously untapped voices of mayors to catalyze the political, social, and economic weight of cities to support trees and forests, recognizing the important role that they play in improving the livelihoods of city inhabitants.

Previously, John-Rob worked with WRI’s Global Restoration Initiative, where he supported the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), a pan-African, country-led initiative to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 to capture benefits for food and water security, poverty alleviation, and climate change resilience. He also led strategic engagement for the Global Restoration Council, a high-level body of restoration champions which aims to harness the collective wisdom, influence, and energy of its members to catalyze and sustain a global movement for landscape restoration.

John-Rob holds a Master of Science in Environmental Policy from the University of Oxford, where he was a student of St Edmund Hall. In addition, he holds a Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Biodiversity & Conservation and a Bachelor of Science in Zoology & Environmental Science, both from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. John-Rob is originally from Botswana and is a dual national of South Africa and the United Kingdom. He speaks fluent Setswana and Sotho and conversational Afrikaans and French, and enjoys being outdoors and in nature.