Nicolas Benjamin Claude Desramaut is a Senior Environmental Engineer at the World Bank, where he leads and supports climate resilience, coastal management, and blue economy operations across the Caribbean, Latin America, and West Africa.  

Since joining the World Bank, he has served as Task Team Leader and senior technical specialist on major investment projects, including the Belize Blue Cities and Beyond Project and the Unleashing the Blue Economy of the Caribbean (UBEC) program. His portfolio spans environmental and social risk management, sustainable sanitation, nature-based solutions, and climate adaptation for small island and coastal communities.  

He holds engineering training in environmental and climate-related fields, grounding his work in applied science, risk analysis, and sustainable infrastructure design.

Lilia Burunciuc is the World Bank’s Country Director for the Caribbean countries. Ms. Burunciuc, a Moldovan national, is responsible for maintaining the partnership with the countries to address their development challenges. Since joining the World Bank in 1996, she held a range of increasingly challenging positions: Director for Central Asia; Manager in Operations Policy and Country Services; Country Manager for Macedonia; Country Program Coordinator for Southern Africa and Central Asia; and Senior Country Officer for Ukraine and Belarus. 

Prior to joining the Bank, Ms. Burunciuc was a Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Moldova, the country’s central bank. She has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from George Washington University (USA) and a Master’s level degree in Economics, Management and Planning from the Technical University of Moldova.

Patrick Smytzek is a Natural Resources Management Specialist in the Environment Department of the South Asia Region. In this role, he contributes to operations and analytics on Nature-Based Tourism and landscape management in South Asia. Prior to this assignment, he has led the World Bank's upstream engagement on the management of Sargassum in the Caribbean. 

His main professional interest is how to leverage natural capital for resilience and sustainable economic development and incorporating these insights into the design of impactful projects.

Sophia joined IFC in 2020, where she supports the Country Manager for Mexico.  She has processed multiple investments in Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services and is working on a co-development project with an innovative start-up transforming sargassum into value-added products.

Before IFC, she worked at the French Embassy in Mexico, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and PwC, gaining experience in economic analysis, international cooperation, and strategy. Sophia holds a Bachelor’s in Economics and a Master’s in International Business from Paris-Dauphine University, and a Bachelor’s in law from Paris Panthéon-Assas University. She also completed an academic exchange at ITAM.

Dr. Legena Henry is the Founder and CEO of Rum & Sargassum Inc. and a Lecturer in Renewable Energy at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. An engineer by training, she holds a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD from UWI. Her academic work spans renewable energy systems, marine hydrodynamics, and applied mechanics, with a strong focus on developing solutions tailored to small island environments. 

Through Rum & Sargassum Inc., Dr. Henry leads one of the Caribbean’s most innovative renewable-energy ventures—converting Sargassum seaweed and distillery waste into biomethane for clean transportation and power. In 2024, the company unveiled Barbados’ first vehicle powered by Sargassum-derived bio-CNG, demonstrating the region’s potential to turn an ecological challenge into a sustainable energy solution. Her work sits at the intersection of blue-economy innovation, environmental resilience, and circular-economy development, offering a practical path for transforming regional waste streams into new industries and low-carbon jobs. 

Of Spanish nationality, David Mogollón is an agricultural engineer from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, with a Master of Business Administration from Instituto de Empresa de Madrid. He started his professional career in the private sector, joining the European Commission in 2005 (Directorate General for Agriculture). Between 2010 and 2020, he worked on advancing the EU nutrition agenda in a number of countries occupying different positions. For example, he took the position of Head of the Food Security, Rural Development, and State Reform section at the EU Delegation in Mali (2010-2013). Between 2013 and 2017 he was Head of the Rural Development and Food Security Section at the EU Delegation in Ethiopia. In 2017 he was appointed EU Head of Cooperation in Honduras, where food security and nutrition was one of the priority sectors. Between 2021 and 2022 he has done consultancy work for the United Nations to support their Strategic Planning in Latin America and worked with GIZ under the Capacity for Nutrition (C4N) project to support the EU at Headquarters and Delegations on nutrition related issues. Currently he is the Head of Cooperation of the EU to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean States, Trinidad and Tobago, the OECS, and CARICOM/CARIFORUM.

Ambassador Jerry J. Enoe serves as Grenada’s Special Envoy for Oceans and Blue Economy Advisor within the Ministry of Blue Economy and Marine Affairs, and Strategic Advisor for Oceans and Blue Economy to the Director General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). He also chairs Grenada’s National Coastal and Ocean Governance Committee and is a Director of the Grenada Solid Waste Management Authority.

He has over two decades of experience in ocean governance, marine spatial planning, environmental management, and geoinformatics.

He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Geoinformatics at the University of the West Indies and holds a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology with a specialization in Climate and Ocean Science from St. George’s University. Ambassador Enoe is an Accredited Director with the Chartered Governance Institute of Canada and a Research Scientist with WINDREF. He has authored and co-authored peer-reviewed publications in several international scientific journals.