Forum Secretariat

Dr Avilash Roul
Executive Director

Dr Avilash Roul was named the Executive Director of the Forum in March 2010. Avilash has been writing, advocating, researching and creating knowledge on Environment and Development since 2000. He was a research fellow and an advisor to Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict - a Delhi-based think tank. Earlier, he worked with Down to Earth (magazine published fortnightly from the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi, India). He has been writing for the New Sunday Express, Down to Earth, EcoWorld, SSPC News and other regional newspapers and magazines.

Avilash worked as the Assistant South Asia Regional Coordinator for the Bank Information Center (BIC). Avilash completed his PhD on environmental negotiations, specializing on water security negotiations. His expertise is on multilateral environmental negotiations, poverty and environment, environmental security, climate change, forest and tribal rights, mining, water and conflict, and wildlife. Avilash has immense experience working with and building capacity of various communities on environmental knowledge base.

Avilash can be contacted at avilash@forum-adb.org.

Tea Soentoro
Network Advocacy Coordinator

Tea has for decades dedicated herself to promote human rights, in particular women’s rights and environmental protection, by integrating feminist perspectives into environmental issues, human rights and debt movements, and on the other hand ecological and debt perspectives into women’s movements. In addition to her experience running advocacies and campaigns, she developed feminist education, monitoring and research programs on international financial institutions for women’s groups in Indonesia and Burmese women’s groups in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Tea has led several networks and organizations in Indonesia since 1996: Bioforum (a network on biodiversity and indigenous people), Sawit Watch (advocacy and campaign network against big scale oil palm plantations), Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity for Human Rights), Nadi (for ecological and gender justice), and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD based in Chiang Mai, Thailand). She is a member of Jubilee South/Asia-Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, the Gender Working Group of NGO Forum on the ADB, and Gender CC-Women for Climate Justice.

Tea loves to bake cakes and pies, do vipassana (insight) meditation, tai chi, yoga and qi gong. The child of a Protestant mother and a Moslem father, educated in a Catholic girl school, and an adult in the midst of atheists and surrounded by Moslem friends in her work, she is now eagerly deepening her understanding of Buddhist wisdom.

Tea can be reached at tea@forum-adb.org.


Maya Eralieva
Coordinator for Central Asia and the Caucasus Region

Maya joined the Forum in March 2007. She completed her higher education at the Department of International Relations, Kyrgyz National State University in 2001. She previously worked as trainer-consultant for the program "Advocacy and Lobby through public participation" and coordinated several mission preparation and election observation projects. After the revolution in March 2005 in Kyrgyz Republic, she worked as a secretary for the Constitutional Council initiated by Kyrgyz civil society groups and which was supported by the Kyrgyz Parliament.

She also worked as an assistant coordinator for the Culture Department at the National Commission of the Kyrgyz Republic for UNESCO and helped coordinate projects related to natural and cultural heritages.

Maya worked as an assistant to a film director for two documentary films entitled, “Gold Accident’ and “Lost Children.”

Maya can be reached at maya@forum-adb.org.


Charity Cantillo-dela Torre
Finance and Administrative Coordinator

Charity joined Forum in July 2003. She has almost twenty years of experience in social development work. Lala was part of GABRIELA, an umbrella organization of women’s groups from different sectors, from 1991 to 1993. She worked with Kanlungan Center Foundation, Inc., a migrant crisis center, from 1993 to 2000. Lala also had a brief stint with the Philippine Rural and Reconstruction Movement (PRRM).

Lala can be contacted at lcantillo@forum-adb.org.


Angela E. Don
Research and Publication Coordinator

Angela has fifteen years of experience in development work. She used to work in a church-led institution and was part of the evaluation team that assessed projects and programs worthy of funding. She also worked in a non-government entity for almost a decade. Angela has also worked closely with the basic sectors, especially peasants and fisherfolks. In the past, she has co-authored trainers’ and operations manual on cooperatives and rural finance institutions. Angela joined the FORUM Secretariat in February 2007.

Angela can be reached at abby@forum-adb.org.

Nina Somera
Policy Researcher

Nina Somera likes to think of herself as a perennial student, who just loves to read and learn. She has campaigned on various issues such as women and labor migration, gender and information and communication technology, urban poor, sexual and reproductive rights, climate change, among many others. In her free time, she scribbles her dreams, poems and memoirs, knowing that she will never be a president or a queen, that these would be worth publishing.

She previously worked with Isis International, the Foundation for Media Alternatives and Kanlungan Center for Migrant Workers. She aims to finish her post-graduate studies in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines very soon.

Nina has several dogs. And of these, she loves Marx the most.

Nina may be reached at nina@forum-adb.org.

Patricia Rodulfa-Simon
Executive Assistant

Patricia joined Forum in November 2004. A graduate of BS Accountancy, she assists the Executive Director, as well as the Finance and Admin Coordinator. She also oversees the day-to-day financial transactions of the Secretariat.

Patty can be contacted at produlfa@forum-adb.org.

Heidy Valdez Nicolas
Office Maintenance Staff

Before joining Forum in April 2008, Heidy Nicolas was with the ISIS International for five years. She also worked for the National Irrigation Administration in the province of Isabela as a radio communication operator. Earlier, Heidy worked as food service supervisor/dietician for a number of catering services in Saudi Arabia where she was assigned in hospitals.

Romil Hernandez
Communications Coordinator

Romil joined the NGO Forum in February 2006. He previously worked as an advocacy officer for CAPP-SIAD, a consortium of non-governmental organizations in the Philippines, which promotes participatory governance. During his two-year stint, he worked closely with local communities, farmers, fisherfolks and indigenous peoples. He has also done policy work with local and national organizations on agrarian reform issues in the Philippines. Earlier, he worked for an evaluation unit of a foreign-assisted development project benefiting agrarian reform communities in the Philippines.

Romil can be reached at romil@forum-adb.org.

Renato Redentor Constantino

Hemantha Withanage

Hemantha Withanage was Forum's Executive Director from 2005 to 2008. Previously, he was the elected international convenor of FORUM for the period 2001-2003. He held the Executive Director and the Senior Environmental Scientist positions of the