Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP) has announced that Jason Cole has been promoted to Program Director, Environment. In this position, Jason will oversee the organization’s Environment domain. He will also serve as a member of the program leadership team. Jason succeeds Alan Holt, who is retiring at the end of this year.
Jason was hired in 2010 as a program officer for MACP’s Environment domain. He played a central role in the development of the Tropical Forests and Coastal Marine programs and managed grants across Brazil, Indonesia, Mesoamerica, and Micronesia. Jason led MACP’s involvement in the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a partnership of six philanthropies and the Government of Norway, aligning and leveraging MACP grantmaking in tropical forest conservation with these collaborating organizations. Jason also played a leading role in developing the domain’s theory of change for community-based conservation and our shared framework for learning with grantee partners
Prior to joining MACP, Jason spent five years as a senior program officer at the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation working on their Andes-Amazon Initiative, which helped establish over 100 million hectares of protected areas across that region. While at Moore, he also led Forever Costa Rica, a multi-stakeholder conservation financing deal to expand and permanently fund the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine protected area systems of Costa Rica. Earlier in his career, Jason worked for Conservation International, where he helped launch the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), a program targeting 19 of the world’s most critical conservation hotspots, and spent nearly three years living in Brazil while managing CEPF’s grantmaking across South America.
“Jason’s deep experience with large-scale grantmaking, conservation initiatives, as well as his commitment to community-based work are valuable assets to our team,” said Mark Sanderson, Managing Program Director at MACP. “We look forward to his contributions as Program Director.”
Jason holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Earlham College and a master’s degree in development economics from the University of East Anglia in England.
