Protecting rainforests, communities, and data: An interview with Trina Noonan from Health In Harmony

Behind the mic today is Trina Noonan, finance director at Health In Harmony. For over 12 years, Trina has helped the organization follow global standards and direct resources to rainforest communities. One of her focus areas is also protecting sensitive data, including information about the organization’s staff, donors, and the rainforest communities HIH serves.

Note: The interview responses have been edited for clarity and brevity with the permission and approval of the interviewee.

People-led solutions for planet-wide challenges

Health In Harmony’s approach is built on working closely with local communities through a practice they call “radical listening.” This approach means sitting down with community members, asking what they need to protect their rainforests, and truly listening without any predetermined plans or agendas.

“The communities are determining their own solutions for protecting these rainforests. That has been the heart of the organization and the heart of the mission for the last 20 years — understanding that people coming in from the outside are not the experts. The experts in protecting these planet-critical resources are the people who live alongside them and have stewarded them for generations.”

This philosophy has consistently led to unexpected but transformative solutions. For example, in Indonesia, one of the first communities HIH worked with identified organic farming training as their most pressing need.

“Our founder, Kinari Webb, often talks about how, in every community she first spoke with in Indonesia, there was a very clear desire for training in organic farming. She was surprised to find that this knowledge wasn’t as prevalent locally because traditional agriculture wasn’t based on organic farming.”

“Instead, it relied on moving to different parts of the rainforest, which could regenerate from this relatively low-impact agricultural method. But with far more people living in one place, this method was no longer the most appropriate. So bringing in organic farming trainers from a nearby island was the solution, and it was just remarkably effective.”

Holistic approach to conservation

What really sets Health In Harmony apart is its holistic approach to conservation. Rather than separating issues like health, economy, and the environment, HIH integrates them. “For a rainforest community, issues of economy or health or education are not separate,” says Trina.

“For anyone around the world, healthcare isn’t separate from your economic or financial situation — they’re so interconnected. The same goes for education and your family dynamics. When communities are designing these solutions, they're very naturally holistic.”

Thanks to this approach, HIH has supported over 225,000 community members, reforested 780 hectares, and protected 3.74 million hectares of rainforest.

Why cybersecurity is essential to a global conservation mission

As HIH expands globally to support endangered rainforests, digital security has become critical to its impact. The organization operates across multiple countries, handling sensitive program and human resource data, including healthcare information for both communities and staff. Protecting this data is paramount — not just to protect individuals and communities, but also to maintain trust.

“Unfortunately, it’s quite common for nonprofits to be targeted because they tend to have fewer resources, because they tend to be a little bit behind the curve [in cybersecurity], and because they tend to have things like websites where scammers can easily test donation forms — for example, using stolen card information.”

Between phishing scams, data breaches, and fraud attempts, the stakes are high. For HIH, even a small breach could threaten relationships with donors or jeopardize the privacy of the rainforest communities it serves. By integrating digital privacy and security practices into its everyday operations, HIH ensures its global team and stakeholders remain protected.

“We hold in very high regard things like strong policies that don't just sit on a shelf but are implemented and become part of the organizational culture. We value our systems, we value having the right tools,” says Trina.

“So maintaining trust with communities — especially rainforest communities — is essential for them to trust people coming in from the outside, particularly when they've been burned before by international groups that have come and made promises that they haven't delivered. That’s an important part of building trust.”

Partnerships that enable resilience

To strengthen its cybersecurity, HIH relies on strategic partnerships and tools like NordVPN. “We use a VPN service and rely on NordVPN as our main source of cyber encryption and threat protection.”

“It’s pretty amazing to have a partner like NordVPN that helps us maintain these really high standards of operations. Sometimes in-kind donations come with so many hoops, you jump through so many that you end up spending as much on personnel time as you would on the cost of the product.”

HIH also works with other institutions to mitigate potential security risks. “I think one of the key things we’ve found is the importance of working as a wider team — not just within our own team, but working with the resources that other organizations have. Being a smaller organization, you can lean on the partners that you have and the resources that they've developed, being larger institutions.”

“We've recruited some really amazing board members who have been able to bring some best practices from other organizations, from their work in the private sector, that have helped strengthen our policies, our practices, and the tools that we have,” says Trina.

“It’s really about identifying who else might have skin in the game, or who might else want to be involved, and what resources they might have available to help.”

Lessons for nonprofits navigating the digital age

HIH offers valuable lessons for other nonprofits, particularly small organizations navigating the challenges of limited resources and increasing cyber threats. One of Trina’s pieces of advice is clear: work with your partners and leverage their resources.

She also believes that meaningful change comes down to relationships — both with people and the planet. A powerful lesson HIH has learned from Indigenous communities is to take a longer view of time:

“Coming from a Western perspective, we’re very oriented around time — around urgency, schedules, and using time as a resource. Especially working in a climate justice-oriented organization, it often feels like time is never on our side. There’s a constant sense of urgency, especially in this critical decade for addressing the climate crisis.”

“I think working with Indigenous communities, working with rainforest communities, has really shown me a different appreciation and a different understanding of time. And an abundance as well, and not thinking of time as resource-limited, but time being a tool of relationship instead.”

“And how valuable that relationship is. It's not just about getting things done in the most efficient manner possible. It's about getting things done in a loving relationship-centered manner.”

For HIH, relationships and long-term vision are key. However, just as important is adopting a mindset where cybersecurity aligns with a nonprofit’s mission to ensure success.

“Any nonprofit, and any person who works at a nonprofit, cares so much about the mission and wants to direct every dollar to the programs they’re working on, to the people that they're working with, to the mission that they have. And that’s very much true for Health In Harmony.”

“It can be challenging to put any resources elsewhere and to want to invest in things like high-quality systems, or making sure that we have the right policies and systems in place. And so I think as we made that shift to scale, we realized that our success depended on having these things in place. These foundational elements are critical because when they fail, they can threaten the organization.”

“There’s a shift in understanding that, if we care about the mission, we have to care about these things too because they can make or break the mission. You really do have to invest in the right systems, people, and infrastructure to avoid a critical incident that can threaten everything you’ve worked for.”

A message of hope

Despite the challenges of today’s climate and digital crises, HIH and Trina remain deeply hopeful about the future:

“Conversations about climate, about the challenges that the world faces, inequality and poverty and health, and the environment, can feel so heavy and can feel so challenging. And I think that one of the things that brings that lightness, that brings that team ethos, that brings that motivation to people like me, who are working on this every day, is that solutions do exist.” 

For HIH, hope is at the heart of everything it does: “We absolutely have paths forward, we have ways to recenter the planet to address the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the inequity crisis, and the really exciting thing is that they're often all part of one solution.”

As rainforests disappear and online threats grow, Health In Harmony shows that collaboration, resilience, and a commitment to both planetary and digital health can make all the difference. Whether your nonprofit is conserving ecosystems, supporting vulnerable populations, or driving social change, protecting your mission starts with securing the tools and trust you rely on every day.

“I always want to end any interview expressing that there is hope and that that's one of the biggest things that this work does for me, and that I hope this interview does for anybody reading it – that there is hope, that there are paths forward. And that's one thing that Health in Harmony is – it's a place of hope for all of the people who are involved with it.”