Bernd Cordes

Bernd is a program officer helping to manage the foundation’s Conservation and Markets Initiative.

In the five years prior to joining the foundation, Bernd was an independent contractor working mostly with private foundations and NGOs on both ocean and terrestrial conservation initiatives in places like Indonesia, the Cook Islands, and Palau, and for a short time was a senior program manager at Vulcan, Inc. in Seattle, responsible for devising potential large-scale philanthropic investments in our oceans’ health.

Before that, Bernd worked for 12 years at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, where he managed both the Western Pacific coastal marine conservation program and the Shorebird and Seabird Conservation Initiative, and for nearly seven years with the Biodiversity Conservation Network, a USAID-funded initiative that explored enterprise-based incentives for forest and nearshore marine conservation across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia. For most of his time with the Biodiversity Conservation Network, he was based in Indonesia.

Bernd has a master of arts in Asian area studies and a master of public policy, both from the University of Michigan. Bernd earned his undergraduate degree from Occidental College. He and his family have lived in Half Moon Bay since 2001.