Biography|Kirsten Schuijt — The International Board That Named Her Director General Here

People treat the top WWF job as something that has always been open to a woman from the national offices.

Until 17 October 2022 it had not been.

On that day WWF International announced that Dr Kirsten Schuijt, then chief executive of WWF-Netherlands, would become director general on 1 January 2023.

The announcement came from this secretariat in Gland, under interim board president Neville Isdell, after an open search.

She would be the first woman to hold the post in the organisation's six decades.

The appointment did not come from outside.

She had already spent close to twenty years inside the network, including six as a member of the Network Executive Team, and six as CEO in Zeist after taking over from Johan van de Gronden on 1 July 2016.

Companies House later recorded her full name as Kirsten Diane Schuijt and her start as a UK-registered director of the international body on 25 January 2023.

The correspondence address on that filing is 28 Rue Mauverney, Gland — the IUCN Conservation Centre next to WWF's older block, where the secretariat had moved around 2017.

Outgoing director general Marco Lambertini was kept on as special envoy through December 2023 to hand over the files.

The pin is the campus that issued the announcement, not a restaurant or a stage.

A visitor reads a personnel notice that changed who signs the network's letters.

Photo: Swadim, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons