Shauna Mahajan

Director, Western Indian Ocean Seascape, Oceans

Shauna Mahajan
Media inquiries: News And Press Page

Shauna leads WWF-US's seascape work in the Western Indian Ocean. With a background in resilience and systems thinking, environment, and development, Shauna takes a holistic and inclusive approach to co-designing conservation strategies in five countries that border the Western Indian Ocean to advance an inclusive and transformative conservation agenda. 

Shauna has over a decade of experience researching and working on integrated social and ecological issues. Her past work has taken her to explore the agriculture landscapes of Quebec, river basins and coastlines in the eastern United States, and fishing communities in the Indian Ocean. Shauna has also led research on enabling evidence-informed conservation, embedding systems thinking into conservation strategy and evaluation, and community-led conservation.

Outside of WWF, Shauna is a hatha yoga teacher and folk singer-songwriter, where her passion for mindfulness and storytelling intersect with her desire to create a more sustainable and just future.

“I often think of my work as ‘dot-connecting’ – looking for those unexpected links in complex systems that might just be the key to unlocking transformative change.”

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More on Shauna

Media inquiries: News And Press Page

Title

Director, Western Indian Ocean Seascape

Education

  • MSc, Social-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden
  • BA, Environment and Development, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Areas of Expertise

  • Systems and resilience thinking
  • Community-based conservation
  • Evidence-informed decision-making
  • Conservation social science
  • Participatory research
  • Coastal ecosystems