Oana Mondoc

Co-founder & General Manager, WeWilder by WWF
Co-founder, Gugulandia Cooperative

Oana Patricia Mondoc is a conservation innovator and social entrepreneur working at the frontier of rewilding, community development, and food culture. With over a decade at WWF, she has championed the idea that lasting conservation must be rooted in the lives, livelihoods and kitchens of local communities.

In 2020 she co-foundedWeWilder by WWF—Romania’s first conservation social enterprise—building its campus in the Southern Carpathians as both a community hub and a living research lab for innovation in gastronomy. Here, wild landscapes become the starting point for exploring how food can reconnect people to nature: through foraging traditions, biodiversity-rich terroir, and culinary experiences that make ecology tangible and desirable. The campus’s nature learning programme was recognised as a flagship model for Regenerative Tourism at the EU Parliament.

In 2026 she co-founded Gugulandia Cooperative, a small-scale farming initiative dedicated to high-value, terroir-driven food production and biodiversity-friendly land practices—a direct expression of her belief that you can save the world with good food, lifting communities from their soil upwards.

Oana’s work sits at the intersection of rewilding and gastronomy—using food as abridge between wild nature and the people who live alongside it, and as a tool for dignifying rural heritage, strengthening local economies, and making conservation something worth tasting.

Since 2026, she has been recognised as an Expert by the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism (IGCAT).