Visiting Scholars and Attorneys

ELI hosts environmental lawyers, practitioners, and scholars working on policy research projects aimed at domestic American environmental policy — national, regional or state — and at the international level and national level in other countries. Individual scholars are typically in residence at the Institute for periods of one to three months, with some staying for a year or more. These residencies help to strengthen institutions and stimulate intellectual activity across disciplines and borders. The program helps to build and sustain a growing network of environmental lawyers and related professionals dedicated to advancing environmental protection.

We are pleased to introduce the Visiting Scholars and Attorneys currently working with the Ocean Program:

Bruce Rich

Bruce Rich is an American writer and lawyer who has published extensively on the environment in developing countries and development in general, as well as on history and philosophy. He has worked with major U.S. environmental groups and international organizations over the past three and a half decades.

Bruce was awarded the United Nations Global 500 Award for environmental achievement for his research and advocacy concerning international financial institutions. He worked for three decades as an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, and has testified in numerous congressional hearings on U.S. participation in international financial institution and international organizations. He has written articles and op-eds for a number of publications, including The Financial Times, Open Democracy, The Nation, and The Ecologist, and he is a regular columnist to The Environmental Forum, for which he has also contributed feature cover stories. His books include the widely acclaimed Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development as well as Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction.

Bruce is an honors graduate of Yale College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Enrique Sanjurjo

Enrique is an environmental economist with 24 years of experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of environmental projects, programs, and policies. He comes to ELI after 13 years at WWF-Mexico, where he worked as field officer, project manager, and the head of the Ocean Program. Under his leadership, WWF-Mexico created the Secretariat of the Expert Committee on Fishing Technologies (ECOFT), which developed over a dozen technologies to reduce fisheries by-catch; created an NGO of fishers that support scientists on marine biology monitoring, gear testing and ghost net retrieval, and participated in negotiations with the fishing industry and the Mexican Government that led to the elimination of harmful fishing subsides in Mexico. Among other achievements, Enrique participated in different delegations with WWF at UNESCO, CITES and WTO; created a volunteer program for the disentanglement of marine mammals in La Paz; and participated in the creation of a co-management network that has reduced small vessel strikes on whale sharks by 20%.

Enrique has eighteen academic publications on different topics related to environmental economics and conservation policy. His expertise is focused on building a shared vision with governments, donors, and industry representatives towards the conservation of the oceans and the development of coastal communities in Mexico and beyond. At ELI, Enrique’s work focuses on the Laguna Madre region, a shared ecosystem between Mexico and the U.S.

Josephine Woronoff

Josephine Woronoff joined ELI as a Visiting Attorney with the Ocean Program in May 2021. She is focusing on the regulation of blue finance for sustainable development of fisheries-dependent communities. Josephine is a Belgian attorney and researcher specialized in international trade and ocean governance. She holds a Masters in Law from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), a Bachelor of Philosophy from Université Saint-Louis (Belgium) and an LL.M. from Duke University. Josephine is based in Brussels, Belgium.

She developed her expertise in ocean law and fisheries management as a Visiting Attorney at Earthjustice (DC), legal consultant for ELI, and teaching assistant and researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Prior to ocean and fisheries, Josephine was specialized in international law and trade, working at the International Court of Justice, the European Commission and Crowell & Moring law firm.

Patience Whitten

Patience has more than 25 years of experience working on both domestic and international environmental impact assessment (EIA) issues for the U.S. government, including NOAA, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Patience has been Team Lead/Team Member on numerous international training missions for the USG, advising environmental officials in Morocco, Thailand, Hungary, Ukraine and Jordan on EIA policy and practice. She has been both a reviewer and preparer of EIAs and manager of the EIA process over many years.

Patience co-directs ELI’s Blue Growth Law and Governance Initiative, a new effort to build strategic partnerships and develop specialized research on how to strengthen environmental rule-of-law at sea. Patience is also representing ELI at the stakeholder engagement efforts of the United Nations negotiation process on the development of an international legal instrument for the protection of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ process).

Patience received a M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; an M.A. in Marine Affairs at the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in English from Grinnell College.

Tim Cunningham

Tim Cunningham is an Attorney-Advisor with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Office of Chief Counsel. He specializes in the Public Assistance grant program providing legal services and strategy for administrative appeals, arbitration, litigation, and ethics issues. Before beginning work with FEMA he enjoyed time with the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resource Division and with The Nature Conservancy.

Tim is a graduate of Vermont Law School, where he earned his JD and a Masters of Environmental Law & Policy. His passion is environmental law, specifically land and species conservation as well as international environmental policy. In his free time he enjoys hiking, traveling, and trying to find the best restaurants around.