Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP) announced that Meera Bhat has joined the organization as Program Director, Environment. In this position, Meera will provide leadership for MACP’s Environment domain and four community-led conservation programs in Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific and North America focused on tropical forests, grasslands, freshwater, and coastal marine ecosystems. She will be responsible for ongoing development and implementation of program strategy, providing direction and oversight to grantmaking and operations, and managing the Environment team. She will also serve on the Program Leadership Team.
Meera joins MACP following 12 years at The Nature Conservancy, where she most recently served as the Global Managing Director of Equitable Conservation. In that role, Meera helped build strategies and programs to place equity, human rights and community leadership at the heart of effective and enduring conservation, learning from and working alongside colleagues, partners, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities throughout the process. Her work has included advancing Indigenous rights and sovereignty, strengthening human rights and social safeguards, supporting equitable grantmaking and finance, and developing tools and frameworks for embedding and measuring equity across the organization’s global conservation portfolio.
Mark Sanderson, Managing Director, Programs at MACP, commented, “Meera brings significant experience working with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to protect ecosystems and improve human well-being. Her understanding of community-led conservation will be an asset to the team and our partners.”
Prior to The Nature Conservancy, Meera served as a Program Manager at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, researching the ecology of infectious diseases in diverse settings. Meera holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Cell & Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in Computational Biology from New York University.
