Our Team

Stephanie Fennessy - MSc

Executive Officer

Steph is a skilled and experienced project manager with a range of expertise in the environmental and conservation sectors. With an MSc in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure, she has successfully worked in diverse working cultures and multi-disciplinary teams within the private, Government and NGO sector on three continents – Africa, Australia and Europe – and her expertise ranges from community based natural resource management to technical sustainability solutions. For the past decade she has been involved in a wide range of giraffe projects across Africa and particularly enjoys the fieldwork component of such projects. As a keen supporter from the start and the first employee of GCF she is looking forward to helping GCF to make a real impact on giraffe conservation in Africa.

Katie Dean - BSc (Hons)

Fulbright Student

Katie is a graduate of New College of Florida and recipient of a Fulbright grant to study giraffe in Etosha National Park, Namibia. During her undergraduate studies, an interest in animal behaviour and conservation led her to internships with the Lemur Conservation Foundation, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and National Zoological Park. Katie conducted her honours thesis research on the feeding behaviour of vervet monkeys in South Africa, where she decided she liked giraffes more than primates. She is excited to be working with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and the Namibia Nature Foundation during her Fulbright year. 

Andri Marais - MTech

Research Assistant

 Andri first studied giraffe for her Masters with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. She did her fieldwork in the southern Cape region of South Africa, where she studied giraffe feeding ecology, impact and browsing capacity in mosaic thicket to facilitate the management of extralimital giraffe in the region. Currently, Andri is a freelance environmental scientist with a passion for giraffe research and fieldwork. She is currently compiling a database with giraffe numbers in distribution in Namibia in order to determine the status of giraffe populations in the country. This database will help to inform an essential conservation management strategy for giraffe in Africa. Andri is also a student member of the IUCN SSC/ASG International Giraffe Working Group.