Board of Directors and Advisors
© Hoangchi Dung, Douc Langur Foundation
IPPL Board of Directors
All board members are independent voting members.
Deborah Misotti,
Chairwoman
Deborah Misotti, an IPPL supporter for more than 40 years, has been working with primates for almost thirty years. Debbie, along with her husband, Tom, created The Talkin’ Monkeys Project primate sanctuary with an emphasis on the education of the next generation of conservationists. The Talkin’ Monkeys Project was created in 1999, with guidance over the years from Shirley McGreal.
This entity has become affiliated with many colleges and universities around the world as a community partner. Debbie’s experience as VP of the Hendry County Leadership Council led to her creation of a Youth Leadership program established through the sanctuary for this County. Several Florida counties have replicated this program as a strong legacy combining Volunteering and Service Learning.
These programs have led to the sanctuary sending many of its volunteers as Interns to sanctuaries and educational opportunities around the world. Her students have come from Florida Gulf Coast University, University of Florida, University of Maryland, Duke University, and the University of Southern California, to name a few here in the USA. International students have come from Oxford Brooks University, University of Glasgow, the University of St Andrews in the UK, Lund University in Sweden, Australian National University, and Seoul University, South Korea. Students have attended the IPPL Conferences as her guests. These meetings and the educational sanctuary concept have inspired many of her students to pursue careers as primatologists, researchers, environmental educators, and many other varied careers around the globe.
Sian Evans,
Secretary
Dr. Sian Evans was born in the United Kingdom. She also received her Ph.D. from the University of Wales in 1981. Dr. Evans interest in primatology started when she met Porky, the alpha male in a group of pigtail monkeys, at the London Zoo and studied the social dynamics of his group. During her career, Dr. Evans has been the managing director of the DuMond Conservancy for Primates and Tropical Forests in Miami, travels to Colombia to lecture Colombian students on enforcing international laws in the trade of primates, was the founding vice president for education for the International Primatological Society, and was awarded the Presidential Medal from the American Society of Primatologists.
Dr. Evans now lives on a horse ranch in Miami with her retired veterinarian husband, Dr. Robert Cooper, and she herself teaches in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Honors College at Florida International University. They have a daughter: Seren, who was a “Teach for America” chemistry teacher at North Miami Beach Senior High and now is now teaching at Southridge High School. Their son Evan, a former US Marine, was a student at Lynn University when he unexpectedly died several years ago. Sian misses him every single day.
Angela Maldonado,
Treasurer
Dr. Angela Maldonado is a Colombian conservationist, director, and founder of Fundación Entropika, a grass-roots organization located in Leticia, Colombia. She has dedicated her life to reducing the illegal wildlife trade in the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon. Her efforts have resulted in hunting bans on night monkeys, opening investigations into this illegal market, which led to a dramatic reduction in the trafficking of night monkeys captured and sold for use in laboratory experiments.
Since 2018, she has focused on securing international collaboration between governmental agencies to train law enforcement authorities at the Colombian-Peruvian border. She aims to enhance capacity building and coordination to detect and seize illegally traded wildlife used in the tourism industry as photographic props and target money laundering businesses that exploit wildlife and vulnerable indigenous communities. She won international and national prizes and awards such as the National Geographic Buffet Award for Leadership in Conservation in Latin America in 2020 and the Whitley Gold Award in 2010, among others.
Lois K. Lippold
Lois K. Lippold obtained her Ph.D. degree in anthropology and biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was then appointed professor at San Diego State where she spent 35 years teaching and was awarded several “Most influential Professor Awards”. During one of her class field trips to the San Diego Zoo, she discovered a group of Douc Langurs. It was “love at first sight” and she began long-term studies of douc reproduction and aspects of mother, father, and infant behavior at the zoo.
Sensing that the Vietnam War was coming to a close, Lippold traveled to Vietnam in 1974 to learn whether the endangered douc had survived the war. She conducted the first field study of doucs at what is now Son Tra Nature Reserve. Missiles ended her fieldwork after a few months. Upon return from Vietnam, Lois spent countless nights sleeping at the San Diego Zoo to observe and establish douc birth behavior. During this time, she also mapped douc hormone profiles which resulted in discovering the douc estrus cycle and gestation length.
After retiring from San Diego State in 2003, Lippold founded the Douc Langur Foundation with the mission “To protect the Douc Langur and their wild habitat to ensure that they will survive in their home range for future generations.” She has returned to Son Tra Nature Reserve and DLF and has concentrated on scientific field studies and conservation activities focused on sustaining the endangered Douc Langur populations. Lippold’s activities have expanded to include long-term gibbon research and protection at Chu Mom Ray National supported primarily by IPPL, Great Ape Conservation, US Fish and Wildlife, Conservation International, Save Our Species, San Diego Zoo, and Primate Conservation, Inc.
Dr. Lippold has been appointed to the International Union of Conservation of Nature/ Species Survival Commission and the Primate Specialists Group as an expert in Douc Langurs and Gibbons. At the same time, she is responsible for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Douc Studbook which documents the pedigree and entire demography of the douc. She lives in Southern California with her family.
Ian Redmond, OBE
Renowned for his 40-year career studying and striving to protect gorillas and elephants, Ian describes himself as a naturalist by birth, a biologist by training, and a conservationist by necessity. His work has ranged from the undercover investigation of wildlife traffickers to helping local conservationists during Africa’s civil wars to consulting on more than 100 documentaries for BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and others. He studied gorillas with Dian Fossey, later assisting Sigourney Weaver when she portrayed Fossey in “Gorillas in the Mist.” Ian works from his office in Stroud, England, consulting for the UN Great Apes Survival Partnership (which he co-founded) and Born Free Foundation, which supports his work as chair of Ape Alliance, chair of the Species Survival Network Primate Working Group, and ambassador for the UN Convention on Migratory Species. He consults to field projects such as Limbe (Cameroon) Wildlife Center, an IPPL partner, and he chairs The Gorilla Organization. His ninth book is The Primate Family Tree: The Amazing Diversity of Our Closest Relatives. Ian is currently using virtual reality and other technologies to make conservation education more widely available.
Sam Shanee
Dr. Sam Shanee was born and raised in London, UK, but has spent the last 25 years traveling and working in the tropics. It was during his travels that he decided to volunteer at a wildlife rescue center in Bolivia, where he fell in love with the work and decided to dedicate his life to conservation. Sam has since worked on various wildlife rescue and reintroduction projects in South America, Asia, and the Middle East, with species ranging from Orangutans and Gibbons, Oryx and Ostrich, to Leopards, Pumas, and Jaguars.Sam received his MSc in Primate Conservation in 2006, and his Ph.D. in 2013, both from Oxford Brookes University in the UK. In 2007 Sam co-founded the NGO Neotropical Primate Conservation, focusing his work on primate conservation through community-based initiatives. Since then, he has permanently lived and worked in Peru, with regular visits to Ecuador and Colombia. He tries to bridge the gap between academia and activism. Sam is also a member of the IUCN primate specialist group, on the council of the Latin American Primatological Society, and a research associate of Oxford Brookes University.
IPPL Field Representatives
Wherever primates can be found, our Field Representatives work to create and preserve national parks and sanctuaries, promote bans on primate hunting and trapping, and help combat local and international primate trade. IPPL currently has 25 Field Representatives in 19 countries.
- S. Theodore Baskaran (South India)
- Vijay Bhatia (North India)
- Katriona Bradley, DVM (Hong Kong)
- Bernadette Bresard, MD, DVM (France)
- Dr. Roland Corluy (Belgium)
- Olga Feliu, DVM (Spain)
- Dr. Ranjen Fernando (Sri Lanka)
- Evelyn Gallardo (Costa Rica)
- Dr. Gustavo Gandini (Italy)
- Martha Gutierrez (Argentina)
- Bettina Hickman (Zambia)
- Milka Knezevic-Ivaskovic (Serbia)
- Dr. S.M. Mohnot (Central and West India)
- Elba Muñoz Lopez (Chile)
- Louis Ng (Singapore)
- David Root (Costa Rica)
- Valerie Sackey (Ghana)
- Josef Schmuck (Austria)
- Jean Senogles (South Africa)
- Lynette Shanley (Australia)
- Dr. Akira Suzuki (Japan)
- Andrzej Szwagrzak (Bolivia)
- David van Gennep (Netherlands)
- Hilko Wiersema (Netherlands)
IPPL Advisory Board
Our advisors include experts from the fields of zoology, anthropology, medicine, biology, veterinary medicine, and psychology. IPPL's Advisory Board currently consists of 10 members.
- Dr. James Alcock
- Dr. Frances Burton
- Dr. Jane Goodall
- Rosalind Hanson-Alp
- J. Mangalraj Johnson
- Ann Koros
- Dr. Iqbal Malik
- Heather McGiffin Teleki
- Dr. William McGrew
- Dr. Vernon Reynolds