About Montek

Mark Burget is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Re:wild. A celebrated nonprofit leader, he works to protect the diversity of life on Earth. Mark served as the most senior conservation leader of The Nature Conservancy in North America and as President of the ClimateWorks Foundation, a $1B+ global philanthropic network focused on energy and land use policy in the U.S., China, India, Latin America and the European Union. He earned his J.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Virginia and his B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College. Mark has served on numerous boards, commissions and advisory groups, including the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Volgenau Climate Initiative, Children and Nature Network, Mighty Earth, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Energy Foundation (U.S. and China), European Climate Foundation, International Council on Clean Transportation, Climate and Land Use Alliance, Institute for Industrial Productivity, Allotrope Partners and Bio-Logical Capital.

Prince Emmanuel de Merode (Emmanuel Werner Marie Ghislain de Merode) is a conservationist and anthropologist. He has served as Director of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 2008. Emmanuel de Merode is a conservation practitioner and scholar with decades of experience in Central and Eastern Africa, specializing in endangered species protection, combating illegal wildlife trade, and strengthening ranger-led conservation in conflict-affected regions through community-based economic development. Appointed Director of Virunga National Park in 2008, he has led more than 680 rangers under conditions of prolonged armed conflict, safeguarding globally significant populations of mountain gorillas, elephants, okapis, and chimpanzees. Through sustained negotiation with government authorities and armed groups, he helped establish the park’s neutral conservation status. In 2013, he co-founded the Virunga Alliance, promoting peace-building and post-conflict recovery through clean energy, ecotourism, and sustainable livelihoods, with the goal of creating 80,000–100,000 jobs for surrounding communities. Under his leadership, Virunga National Park reopened to the public in 2014. His work has been featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Virunga and in a TEDxWWF talk. De Merode is the author of fourteen scientific papers and co-editor of Virunga: The Survival of Africa’s First National Park. He has received numerous international honors, including an Honorary OBE (UK), the Order of Leopold I (Belgium), the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, National Geographic Explorer of the Year, and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Biodiversity Award.