Angela Cropper

Angela Sarojanie Cropper ( Persad; She was one of 12 children, and was the first in her family to attend secondary school. After graduating, she attended the University of the West Indies, where she obtained a degree in economics under the mentorship of Lloyd Best.

Career After graduating from the University of the West Indies, Cropper worked for the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) as a research officer. She later established a retail business in partnership with Jeremy Mar, before returning to university pursuing a law degree.

She served in various capacities with the Caribbean Community and Common Market Secretariat (CARICOM) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). She was interim Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and Senior Adviser on Environment and Development with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

She also served on a number of international advisory boards, including the CARICOM Task Force on Functional Cooperation, the Council of the United Nations University, the European Union High-Level Panel on Sustainability, the Board of Trustees of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the External Advisory Group to the World Bank on the implementation of its forest strategy. She was a Visiting Distinguished Fellow with the Woods Hole Research Center, and a Visiting Distinguished Fellow and McCluskey Fellow with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Cropper was appointed to the position of assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November 2007.

Personal life Angela Cropper met her husband, John Cropper, an agricultural economist, while she worked at CARIRI as a research officer. Lester Pitman's sentence was later reduced to 40 years imprisonment.

Cropper died of cancer on 12 November 2012 in London, at the home of her brother Ken Persad.