Pacific key contacts

Connon Andrews

Manager Pacific Partnerships

Molly is an international development practitioner with over 20 years of experience based in Fiji and the Pacific. She specialises in program design and management, knowledge brokering, and capacity building focused on the targeted application of climate and ocean science for resilient development, policy, and decision-making. Molly has worked directly with government, NGO, and private sector actors at community, national, and regional levels to design initiatives, achieve improved resilience and  development outcomes. Her diverse background includes roles as a US Peace Corps Volunteer, manager of a coral reef conservation NGO, manager of the Fiji Water Foundation, and regional coordinator of the Pacific Maritime Boundaries Programme.  She holds a Master of Public Administration in Sustainable Development Practice from Columbia University and is a dual citizen of Fiji and the United States.

Cyprien is a coastal hazard and flood expert. He completed his PhD in 2013 at the University of Western Australia studying the morphodynamics of reef fronted beaches in the Perth area. As part of his PhD he developed a GPU version of a surf zone hydrodynamics model that he continues to manage. His knowledge about the wave climate and wave transformation on reefs led him to work at the Pacific Community in Fiji as a coastal oceanographer. There, he was managing the WACOP research project aimed at improving the baseline knowledge about the wave climate, coastal hazards and suitability of wave energy extraction device. Cyprien has been working on coastal hazard assessments for various islands of the Pacific and developing new tools for coastal inundation forecast. In 2017 Cyprien moved to New Zealand to continue his work as part of the National Institute for Water and Atmosphere. Since, he has been involved in numerous tsunami, coastal, and fluvial hazard assessment. Most notably, Cyprien has been developing a new inundation model and numerous tools that enabled the development of national scale fluvial inundation hazard maps.

Juliana has fifteen years post-graduate experience in implementing applied research and international development projects in the fields of climate services, climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, risk analysis, renewable energy and environmental conservation. At NIWA, she manages a wide range of cross-cultural applied science activities in the Pacific Islands, with particular skills in stakeholder engagement, policy development, participatory research, science communication, capacity building, grant writing and project management.  Previously,  she lived and worked in Vanuatu, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands, as well as for the Marshall Islands Mission to the United Nations in New York.  She holds a Master of Science in Environmental Studies from Victoria University and is part of the World Meteorological Organisation’s Research Board on Weather, Climate, Water and the Environment.

Anuragh Chandra

Instrument technician - Climate & Hydro