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Meet our team
Dr Alayne Oriol Cotterill
Joint CEO, Lion Landscapes
Alayne is the Joint CEO of Lion Landscapes, where she co-leads the organisation's mission to make large carnivore conservation valuable to people, both locally and globally. With more than 30 years of experience across southern and East Africa, Alayne has dedicated her career to developing practical, community-led approaches that improve coexistence between people and wildlife across a wide range of landscapes.
Alayne founded Lion Landscapes in 2016 and co-founded its current form with Amy Dickman in 2020 through its merger with the Ruaha Carnivore Project. Today, she leads an organisation built on long-term partnerships with communities, land managers, businesses, governments and conservation organisations, working together to deliver lasting conservation impact at scale.
Her work combines scientific research with collaborative conservation, focusing on the human and environmental factors that enable large carnivores and people to coexist over the long term. She is particularly interested in developing innovative approaches that create tangible value from wildlife conservation for local communities, while demonstrating that conservation and sustainable livelihoods can go hand in hand.
Alayne holds a D.Phil. from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford. She is a founding member of the Pride Lion Conservation Alliance, a pan-African network of conservation leaders working to strengthen carnivore conservation across the continent, and has contributed extensively to international conservation research, policy and practice.
Alayne lives in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and when not working, she spends time with her family and makes the most of her beautiful surroundings through mountain biking, sea swimming, running and hiking. Being in nature, exploring new places or ideas, and quality time with family and friends are the things that sustain and inspire her.