e-Parliament in Action

Nicholas Dunlop, Secretary-General, is co-founder and Secretary-General of the e-Parliament. Dunlop served for ten years as the first Secretary-General of Parliamentarians for Global Action, an international network of legislators concerned with global problems. He designed and launched the Six Nation Peace Initiative, which brought together the Presidents and Prime Ministers of Argentina, Greece, India, Mexico, Sweden and Tanzania in a group to work on nuclear disarmament. He was a co-recipient of the first Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Development and International Cooperation, an annual award presented by the President of India.

More recently, Nicholas Dunlop was Executive Director of the EarthAction Network, which consists of over 2,000 citizen groups in more than 160 countries working together to generate political will to solve global problems. Working with celebrities such as the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the rock band Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dunlop has helped to increase public attention to major problems such as climate change and desertification. He has also served as a Consultant to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme on relations with national parliaments. Educated in Singapore, India and New Zealand, Nicholas Dunlop is a citizen of Ireland and New Zealand, and is based England. He has two children.

Sanjay Kumar , the e-Parliament’s India Director, is currently on secondment from the Indian Forest Service where he has worked for 25 years, specializing in participatory natural resource management. While serving in the Government of India, he was responsible for policies and programmes related to afforestation and eco-development including a major initiative of the Indian Government to decentralize forestry management at both village and district level.

Sanjay was also in charge of the plan to increase the forest and tree cover in India to 1/3rd of the country’s geographical area – as laid down in the National Forest Policy. As part of this work he developed a media plan which featured a series of short films which were shown in villages across India.

During his tenure in the Government of India, Sanjay Kumar also coordinated the work of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Notable achievements during this period included the publication of a Desertification Atlas of India prepared by the Space Application Centre in 2008, and negotiations on the 10-Year Strategic Plan and Framework for UNCCD (2009-1018).

Sanjay Kumar holds a degree of M.Phil in Public Administration from Panjab University, Chandigarh, and a Ph.D in Human Geography from University of Cambridge, England (UK). He is a prolific author – writing articles on environmental policy for international journals and contributing to books published by Oxford (India) and Edward Arnold (UK).

Jesper Grolin , Executive Director, lectured in political science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and worked as an Assistant Research Professor at Copenhagen Business School. For six years he was a full time Political Advisor to Greenpeace International, working on forests, biodiversity and Baltic Sea issues.

Among other roles, Grolin has acted as Coordinator of the Network for Environmental Sociology within the European Sociology Association, served as a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Business, Bodø, Norway and the University of Lund, Sweden, been a Member of the Planning Committee of Denmark’s Greening of Industry Network, and a Member of the Danish Council for European Politics. He is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jasper Bouverie joined the e-Parliament as Communication Director in early 2008 after eight years working as a producer for the BBC World Service’s flagship magazine programme ‘Outlook’. While working for the BBC Jasper not only produced the live daily programme but also managed the programme website and also completed a series of videos entitled 'Me and the Media' for the World Service 75th anniversary in 2007. Other highlights of his BBC career included coordinating Schoolday24 (a radio and multimedia event in which schoolchildren talked to each other from opposing sides in areas of conflict), leading a team for a 19-hour live broadcast from the top of Table Mountain for the BBC World Service 70th anniversary and producing a two-part documentary for Radio 4 on container shipping: this questioned the sustainability of modern methods of trade.

Prior to his BBC career, he worked as a freelance writer and wrote features on environmental subjects for British national newspapers and, in 2003, he took time off from the BBC to investigate the sustainability of his own lifestyle – publishing his own blog called Inmybin.com. In the late 1980s, he worked for 4 years as a journalist on a local English-language magazine in Egypt and, in Italy, as an English language teacher. He has an Honours degree from the University of Bristol in Modern History, focusing on the history of sub-Saharan Africa with the specialisation of ‘the roots of segregation in South Africa’.

James Corre , is Programme Officer for Climate, Energy and Ecosystems, graduated from the University of Oxford in 2005 with a research degree (M.Phil) in Development Studies, having conducted original research on the subject of international NGO interventions in conflict zones of Sri Lanka. His background in campaigning and advocacy work within development, human rights and environmental NGOs including Oxfam (UK), Sarvodaya (Sri Lanka), People and Planet (UK) and Collectif Urgence Darfour (France), as well as responsibilities as conference convenor for Students for Development (UK) and a research post at International Crisis Group (Belgium) have provided a solid grounding in the work of international organisations. He joined e-Parliament early in 2008 after a brief editorial stint for the United Nations Development Programme. He speaks French and basic Sinhalese. He also has a BA (Hons) in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Bristol, pursues a strong interest in the interface between spirituality and social and political engagement, and has held various responsibilities within the Network of Engaged Buddhists.

Susana Guerreiro , Programme Officer for Climate, Energy and Ecosystems, graduated in Social and Organizational Psychology in Lisbon, where she was awarded the Academic Merit Award in 2004 as the university’s top-scoring psychology student. Specialising in Environmental Psychology, she conducted research on the subject of attitudes towards the environment, opposition to natural protected areas and the importance of public participation in environmental decisions. Simultaneously she worked with LPN – a Portuguese Environmental NGO – collaborating in a programme for protection of endangered species and ecosystems in the south of Portugal, conducting surveys, press analysis and assisting with communications and newsletters.

She also worked in the fundraising department of Amnesty International in Portugal and as a volunteer for a local NGO in Argentina, providing educational and humanitarian assistance in different parts of the country. Before joining the e-Parliament, she worked briefly for the British Council for School Environments in a project about building sustainable schools. Fluent in three languages, among her other roles Susana handles contacts with Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.

Kitty Garden , is Programme Officer for the European Supergrid Initiative. She has a Degree in Politics and Latin American Studies from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, where she received the Senior Scholarship in Political Studies, for the top senior student in the department. Kitty spent her year abroad at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil and speaks Spanish, French and Portuguese. When not working for the e-Parliament she has worked at various stages as a research assistant, assistant university tutor, recruitment consultant and language teacher.

The e-Parliament are also grateful for help from two teams who work on the website and the database.

The e-Parliament would like to thank the Indian IT firm Cognizant for assigning world-class programmers to work on the development of our website:

Hanmantha Reddy has been the Project Manager for e-Parliament project at Cognizant since February 2006. He has undertaken several initiatives to enhance the e-Parliament website including work on the online voting system and database management. He holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He is currently based in Atlanta, USA.

Jagan Mohan joined the e-Parliament project team in July 2007. He has worked on several modules of e-Parliament website and has been actively involved in enhancements like the hearings and petitions pages. He holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India. He is based in Chennai, India.

Lakshmi Narayanan leads the e-Parliament project team from Chennai, India. He joined the team in August 2008. He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology from Anna University, Chennai, India.

Nitha Krishnan joined the e-Parliament project team in August 2008. She holds a Bachelors degree in Information Technology from the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India. She is based in Chennai, India.

Cris Brigoli, or Briggs, got her degree in Political Science and History from the University of the Philippines. She is currently working for a research and advocacy NGO as a multimedia officer.

Shalom mk Macli-ing is currently working with the Institute for Popular Democracy, a non-governmental organization involved in research and advocacy in the Philippines. She has specialist knowledge of indigenous peoples - including the Moros of Mindanao - and also of trafficking and prostitution.

Malen Ibañez-Tarrobago is a freelance documentalist and has previously worked as executive assistant in an international feminist communications organization, where she had training in information repackaging, and in the use of new information technology tools and the internet for research and advocacy.