Samantha Atukunda K. Mwesigwa
2021 Fellow
Samantha is a vibrant lawyer passionate about promoting women’s leadership in the conservation space. This desire motivated her to apply for the first WE Africa leadership cohort.
Samantha’s passion for the environment and conservation started when she was in High School after spending her vacation holidays interning with Greenwatch, a Non-Government Organization founded in 1995 by her father.
After graduation from law school, she joined the Environment and Natural Resources LLM program at the University of Oregon (UO). During her final semester at UO, she was an extern with the secretariat of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) in Eugene, Oregon, a network of environmental lawyers from all over the world who share their experiences in litigation, support and learn from each other.
In 2012, Samantha moved to Cape Town, where she briefly worked with the Centre for Environmental Rights Access to Information program. Samantha returned to Kampala in 2014 to practice law and was appointed as Executive Director for Greenwatch in 2019.
Since she joined, Greenwatch has instituted several public interest environmental cases, worked closely with the Judicial Training Institute to train judicial officers on climate justice, and trained communities and local government leaders in resource management.
