Bernd is a program officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, where he is part of the Conservation and Markets Initiative team. Prior to joining the Moore Foundation, Bernd was an independent contractor working internationally with philanthropic organizations, NGOs, and the private sector on both ocean and terrestrial conservation initiatives, and for a short time was a senior program manager at Vulcan, Inc. in Seattle, responsible for devising potential large-scale philanthropic investments in our oceans’ health.
Before that, Bernd worked for 12 years at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, where he managed both the Western Pacific Coastal Marine Conservation Program and the Shorebird and Seabird Conservation Initiative, and for more than six years—based mostly in Jakarta—with the Biodiversity Conservation Network, a USAID-funded initiative that explored enterprise-based incentives for forest and near shore marine conservation across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Melanesia.
Bernd has a master of arts in Asian area studies and a master of public policy, both from the University of Michigan, and earned his undergraduate degree in Soviet and West European studies from Occidental College. He has served on the boards of three other organizations based in the US and Pacific.
If I were a shark: I would be a whitetip reef shark. Just because it was the first shark I ever saw in the wild, that I ever observed. Scared the heck out of me at first (I saw Jaws at a young age), until someone told me to just keep a safe distance, enjoy it, don’t fear it—it’s a whitetip.
My happy place: Driving back roads, at the height of Fall colors, to the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York; or exploring Iceland’s Snaefellsnes Peninsula with my wife and daughters.
When I was a kid: I wanted to be a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers (because on my first Little League team, I was, in fact, a pitcher for the Dodgers), then a drummer in a band, then a sports doctor. 0 for 3.
My favorite books: Most recently, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Dutch House, James, A Perfect Spy, and The Anthropocene Reviewed.
