Profile
Brigitte Baptiste is a scientist, an advocate of gender diversity and an inspiring public intellectual based in Colombia. As an ecologist and transgender activist, her work intricately weaves together themes of biodiversity, conservation, and gender identity. She has been an important contributor to the concept of socio-ecosystems, which takes an integrated approach to nature and society, a concept successfully applied in protecting Colombia’s ecosystems. She is President of the Universidad EAN in Bogotá since 2019, after almost ten years serving as director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute where she was key in developing environmental policies for Colombia’s post-conflict areas.A charismatic speaker, a highly visible transgender woman and an LGBTQI activist, Baptiste has raised awareness that cultural diversity is part of nature’s diversity. She was a professor of ecology at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for more than 20 years and has promoted a culture of knowledge mediation in many books, a popular TV series and with regular newspaper columns as well as a presence on social media.
