Sheila has more than 30 years of management and technical expertise from a range of institutions. Sheila is currently the Director of the Economy Division, UNEP.

She was the Director of the Green Climate Fund and Global Environment Facility operations at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She has previously served as an Environmental Specialist at a U.S. State Department of Environmental Protection, as well as at the Environment Liaison Centre International and the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. At UNEP, she held positions ranging from Senior Advisor in the organization’s Strategic Implementation Team to Acting Director of the Policy and Programme Division and Deputy Director of the GEF Coordination Division. Under Sheila’s leadership at IUCN, she grew the programme from the two largest global environmental funding mechanisms five-fold, increasingly bringing in actors from the banking, investment and insurance sectors alongside those from sectors such as energy and agriculture. She is also serving as the external advisor in the UNDP working group that is reviewing its business model in one of its global fund operations. Sheila has authored The Policy Process in International Environmental Governance and Promoting Coherence: Towards an Effective Global Environment Facility.

Sheila holds a doctorate in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia with her Master’s and Bachelors’ degrees from the U.S.