Atossa Soltani

Founder and President of Amazon Watch

Atossa Soltani is the Founder and President of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. Atossa served as Amazon Watch’s first Executive Director for 18 years and continues to support the organization’s mission. Currently Atossa is leading the development of an Amazon Watch and Pachamama Alliance joint-initiative to secure permanent protection for the most biodiverse rainforest in the world, a vast region on the Ecuador-Peru border in the headwaters of the Amazon River. She's also the Director Global Strategy, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, which is building a shared vision among indigenous peoples, NGOs, the philanthropic community, social entrepreneurs and governments towards establishing a bi-national protected region – off-limits to industrial scale resource extraction, and governed in accordance with traditional indigenous principles of cooperation and harmony that foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. [More info](https://sacredheadwaters.org/)