Anja has more than 25 years of experience in rural development projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, working at the interface of livelihood development and sustainable resource management.

She joined World Agroforestry in 2010 as the head of the Research Methods Unit.

She led the Sentinel Landscape Initiative 2012-2016, coordinating 10 teams across eight landscapes that provided evidence of the importance of forests and trees for the livelihoods of rural communities.

Since 2017 she is leading a global policy project for integrating trees-on-farms targets into national plans to support governments’ commitments to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity.

She joined the Global Landscapes Forum as science and policy advisor in 2020.

Anja has a PhD in Agroecology from the University of Braunschweig, Germany, and a master’s degree in Environmental Geochemistry from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.