A life for the wild
My journey in conservation began about eight years ago in a riverbed in Tanzania. Since then, I’ve worked on a variety of projects across Eastern and Southern Africa using social and behavioural sciences to understand the contributing factors behind conservation challenges and co-create conservation strategies that address these challenges at their root, pairing this understanding with ecological data and traditional knowledge to inform more effective, integrated approaches while building the capacity to learn, adapt, and lead lasting change through monitoring, evaluation, and knowledge sharing.
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Over the years, I’ve worked to restore wildlife corridors, improve predator tolerance, support participatory land-use planning, strengthen Indigenous leadership and bring together communities, scientists, and policymakers around shared conservation goals. At the heart of this work is a commitment to translating knowledge into action and creating lasting, system-wide change in conservation.
Mireia Villalonga (Mia)
Connecting fields
The first job I got when I moved to Tanzania was in Public Health. During that period, I was trained by experts in Zambia and Bangladesh to lead a nationwide behavioural change programme that used my background in communications and enhanced it with social and behavioural sciences. Soon, I recognised the potential to apply these sciences to conservation—and so the journey began!
Later, on a trip to Manyara National Park I discovered the transformative power of storytelling through documentary filmmaking.​ From that trip came the opportunity to work on the Serengeti film—which followed in the footsteps of Hugo van Lawick’s Serengeti Diary and Bernhard Grzimek’s Serengeti Shall Not Die. That experience was a turning point, revealing how stories can influence perceptions and behaviours.
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Today, I draw on impact thinking and behavioural science to shape my conservation work and, whenever necessary, use storytelling as a tool to enhance behavioural change and protect our great wilderness.
