Sheena Gilman

Meet Sheena Gilman, a member of WELA’s Leadership Development Program in 2020, the current Chief Conservation for Birdlife in Southern Queensland and member of the Protect the Bush Alliance group.

Sheena believed she was “too old to do WELA” and wanted “younger people to do it so they could take this energy into the future”. But, as she explains in her video below, she realised the program would give her the environmental training background she didn’t have as well as the confidence to learn and share more.

Sheena has found she learned a lot from the program and the women she met. 

“It’s been a huge help to me,” she said. “I’m very grateful for the cohort I have associated with in the past year.”

Women and young people are making change in environment and climate justice and Sheena recommends WELA to: “empower ourselves to do that and to be able to me more articulate around our messaging, about how we write and what we write, who we approach and how to approach people.” 

“I think people should join WELA because we are a male-dominated sort of patriarchal society down South in Queensland and women need to get stronger.”