Board of Directors

Kirsty Lang is a British journalist and broadcaster with a career spanning 30 years in print, audio and TV. She is a former TV anchor on Channel 4 News and BBC World and now hosts Front Row, BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts and culture show. 

Kirsty has a wide and diverse range of interests, having begun her career as a reporter and foreign correspondent. 

She spent six years as a Trustee of the British Council and continues to sit on their advisory board. She is also Chair of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and a visiting professor at the University College London.

Juana Kweitel is the Executive Director of Conectas Human Rights, whose mission is to promote the realisation of human rights and consolidation of the Rule of Law in the Global South – Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

Juana previously worked in Argentina as an institutional coordinator of Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) and as coordinator of their Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Program. 

Juana serves on the Board of Trustees of the Brazil Human Rights Fund (2014), the Advisory Board of Open Global Rights (2013) and is a member of the Assembly of Partners of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, Argentina) and of the Developments in the Field Panel of the Business and Human Rights Journal, published by the Cambridge University Press.

She has a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex and in Political Science from the University of Sao Paulo, where her thesis topic was “Accountability of Latin American Human Rights Organizations”.  

She also holds a postgraduate degree in Human Rights and Democratic Transition from the University of Chile, and she graduated as a lawyer with honours from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

Charmian Gooch jointly led Global Witness's first campaign, exposing the trade in timber between the Khmer Rouge and Thai logging companies and their political and military backers. 

Subsequently, Charmian developed and launched Global Witness’s groundbreaking campaign to combat "blood diamonds". Global Witness was nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize as a result of this work.

In 2014 Charmian was awarded the TED Prize, given to an "extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change." 

In the same year, Charmian, along with Global Witness co-founders Patrick Alley and Simon Taylor, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, awarded to "transformative leaders who are disrupting the status quo." 

She was also named one of Fast Company’s 100 most creative people in business and is a Young Global Leader Alumni.

Christine is a senior executive with over twenty years experience in finance spanning several sectors including not-for-profit and social purpose organisations. 

She enjoys collaborating with modern, dynamic, forward-thinking organisations that are active on physical and mental health, the environment and climate issues, human rights and social justice. 

Christine is Chief Financial Officer at Anna Freud, Trustee and Committee member at Sue Ryder, Independent committee member at The REC. Christine is also a mentor for the University of London’s Careers Group Advisory Panel for Colleagues who are Black, Asian and of Diverse Heritage.

She is the current Chair of the Finance and Remuneration Committee here at Global Witness. 

Fatima Hassan is a South African human rights lawyer and social justice activist. She is the founder and director of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), based in Cape Town. 

Fatima previously served on the Boards of the Raith Foundation, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF-SA), the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), Ndifuna Ukwazi and the SA Council for Medical Schemes. 

She led the Open Society Foundation for South Africa for six years.

She was at the AIDS Law Project for over 10 years, where she also worked on many of the legal cases for the Treatment Action Campaign. 

She clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa for Justice Kate O’Regan and has served as a Ministerial Special Adviser (Health; Public Enterprises).

Fatima has a BA and LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LLM from Duke University.

Fatima is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the recent 2022 Calgary Peace Prize. 

Gaby Darbyshire is a General Partner at Dangerous Ventures, an early-stage VC fund in the US, where she invests in solutions to the world’s most pressing climate challenges. 

Born in Beirut and raised in London, Gaby began her career as a barrister at Middle Temple, practising environmental and criminal law. She also founded a charity for the support of Death Row inmates in the Caribbean, and through her time as a barrister worked on massive multi-year environmental cases and pro bono on death row appeals to the Privy Council. 

A global executive and entrepreneur, she has over 25 years of experience building tech and media businesses, including as co-founder of the digital publishing pioneer Gawker Media. She later ran Framestore Ventures, a corporate incubator that developed original IP for the Oscar-winning UK visual effects company.

Gaby holds a MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a law degree from City University. She currently also serves as Chairman of the Board of Fragment Media Group and Board Director of GOOD/Upworthy, the social impact company.

Marina (she/her) is a Greek-Canadian settler on the unceded, unsurrendered territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (currently known as Vancouver, BC). 

As the Founder and Development Director of Youth4Nature, Marina is fiercely passionate about bridging false silos across nature and climate, while supporting young people to access meaningful, paid opportunities to create nature-climate solutions grounded in community and justice.

Marina holds an MSc (honours) in Forestry and a BSc (honours) in Natural Resources Conservation from the University of British Columbia, and has the pleasure of serving on the Board of Global Witness. 

She is a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholar, a 2022 YWCA Women of Distinction Nominee, and has been named as one of Canada’s Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders and Top 25 under 25 Environmentalists. 

She loves 70’s rock, good vegan food and the BC coast, and is (attempting) to learn modern Greek.

In his 23 years of work experience, Olanrewaju Suraju has pioneered, served on the board of and supported the creation of several civil society organisations, networks and coalitions in Nigeria and across Africa. 

He has worked as consultant and board member to several development agencies, international NGOs, law enforcement agencies and inter-governmental agencies.

He has studied at postgraduate level in Development, Law and Social Justice from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, NGO Management at the University of Manchester, and Public Administration from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State.

He was a Students Union President at Yaba College of Technology as an undergraduate. 

He is a public commentator, campaigner and analyst at national and international levels. He was an active participant in Nigeria’s fight against military regimes in the 1990s and was detained by the military regime of late General Sani Abacha. 

He has been a resource person on topics of human rights, good governance, accountability, networking and citizen mobilisation at local and international levels. 

As a renowned human rights and social activist, with interest in accountability, food security, leadership, human development, anti-corruption and good governance, Mr Suraju has worked and collaborated with many progressive fronts and has held many positions of responsibility.

Mr Suraju is currently the Chairman of Human and Environmental Development Agenda, a Nigeria-based NGO and Civil Society Network Against Corruption.

Patrick co-founded Global Witness in 1995. Since then Global Witness has become a global leader in its field, described by Aryeh Neier, former President of the Open Society Foundations, thus: 

“Global Witness brings together the issues of human rights, corruption, the trade in natural resources, the role of banks, the arms trade, conflict. It is the only organisation that does this. Period.”

Patrick has taken part in over fifty field investigations in South East Asia, Africa and Europe and in subsequent advocacy activities. 

Patrick conceived several of Global Witness’ campaigns and focuses on corruption, conflict resources, forests and land, and environmental defenders. He is a board director of Global Witness and is involved in the organisation’s strategic leadership.

Alongside his two co-founders, Patrick received the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Simon Taylor is a co-founder of Global Witness. 

Simon launched Global Witness’ oil and corruption campaign in 1999. This work began the global call for transparency of payments made by extractive industry companies to governments for the oil, gas and minerals that they extract – revenue streams that for many countries make up almost all government income. 

Exposing corruption in these sectors led to Global Witness’ conception of the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Campaign, which Simon co-launched in 2002 with George Soros and other NGOs, including Transparency International (UK) and Save The Children Fund UK. 

The launch of PWYP, which now consists of over 840 civil society organisations in more than 64 countries worldwide, led directly to the 2002 creation of the extractives industries transparency Initiative (EITI) by the UK Government. 

EITI is now an independent global multi-stakeholder initiative that places civil society in the central role of holding governments and companies to account for the revenue streams developed from extraction.

Simon is increasingly focusing on climate change, with a particular interest in the way in which the fossil fuel industry has corrupted and co-opted global politics to such an extent that it has been able to prevent appropriate action to address the climate crisis.