Patricia Tricorache is an illegal wildlife trade (IWT) expert who began investigating the cheetah trade in 2005 for the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Her research, which covers numbers, routes and drivers for demand and supply, as well as cyber commerce, has brought attention to the much-ignored issue of live cheetah cubs for the trade, and was key to support the inclusion of this trade in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora agenda since 2013. Patricia’s fieldwork has led to increased government involvement in combating wildlife trafficking in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somaliland – a key trafficking route for cheetahs out of eastern Africa. She recently published the largest dataset of identified cases of illegal cheetah trade. Currently, Patricia is an illegal wildlife trafficking research associate at Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.