Biography

A member of the Kankana-ey Igorot from the Mountain Province in the Cordillera Region of the Philippines, Jennifer has spent a large part of her career advocating for the rights of Indigenous people.

At the Tebteba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education) Jennifer was the Legal Desk Coordinator, where she oversaw the design, organisation, and operation of training modules focused on the rights of Indigenous people. In this capacity Jennifer also conducted extensive lobbying of multiple branches of the Government of the Philippines, advocating for policies that directly affect Indigenous peoples’ issues within the country.

Jennifer has led training workshops on Indigenous peoples’ issues for the UN Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues and is a former member of the WIPO secretariat. During discussions that led to the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, Jennifer was a negotiator for the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity as well as the nominated expert of the Government of the Philippines.