Ms. Keisha Garcia is the ESG Natural Capital Lead at ANSA Merchant Bank Limited. Her role requires her to lead the Bank’s process of designing and implementing an ESG strategy that is especially focused on Natural Capital issues.

Keisha has a global career spanning over 20 years that has focused on sustainable development issues. She has extensive experience in undertaking research and in using this research to inform and support environmental/development policy, governance and decision-making at the national, regional and global levels. She has also developed a track record in designing and implementing complex environmental projects; and she has worked to build the capacity of a wide range of stakeholders in her field. Ms. Garcia’s technical expertise includes issues such as biodiversity and ecosystem services; climate change, pollution, agriculture, energy, land use and human rights. She has contributed in a leadership role to international initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), the Global Environmental Outlook of the UN Environment (GEO), and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). 

In Trinidad and Tobago, she has led the process to prepare three national reports as a part of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago’s obligations to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); she contributed to the revision of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan; she was engaged by the UN Environment to prepare a national assessment on pollution and waste in Trinidad and Tobago; she has worked with the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies on a range of human rights issues; and she has prepared Environmental Impact Assessments to name a few. 

Ms. Garcia holds a Bachelor of Science (Zoology: First Class Honours); a Masters of Philosophy in Zoology with a specialisation in Environmental Toxicology; and a second Masters of Philosophy in “Environment and Development” from the University of Cambridge, England. She is the recipient of two national scholarships from the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago; a postgraduate scholarship from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and a British Commonwealth Professional Fellowship Scholarship.