Principal Investigator

In 1999 I was competitively selected to become an US Presidential Management Fellow under the Clinton Administration where I served until 2001 with the US Department of Interior. As a Conservation Training Specialist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center I was both well-trained, and learned to develop, design, and deliver curriculum. My interest in exploring the field of environmental conflict, specifically, emerged while I was completing a conflict analysis of forestry/fisheries related issues in Juneau, Alaska. My tenure with NCTC also permitted me to serve as the Course Leader for six training courses that focused on a range of topics that included both education, outreach, conflict management, and collaborative decision-making. After 9/11, I joined the US Department of Commerce. My six-year tenure at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Office of International Activities was highly successful, culminating in various leadership roles and awards. The most significant, of course, was NOAA’s support for me to fulfill an individual development goal; to do my doctoral research at the University of Cambridge, and extensive fieldwork in southern Honduras while remaining a federal employee. Subsequently, I bring six years of experience as a Senior Program Manager with extensive knowledge of oceans, coasts, energy and climate related issues subsequent to working with a huge cohort of scientists and experts within NOAA and the USG. Immediately after joining NOAA, I secured Economic Support Funds (ESF) from the State Department, aligned with US foreign policy goals in the Central American region. My efforts with NOAA, recognized at the highest levels, culminated in a United States Department of Commerce Leadership Award for successfully leading NOAA Research efforts in the development and implementation of the Regional Sea Grant Program in Latin America by June 2006. By May 2007, the Marine Policy Journal published our first findings. Furthermore, we determined programmatic efforts would be more fruitful outside of the federal bureaucracy, leading me to resign, and begin creating the 501c3 by the end of October 2007. In my role as the Principal Investigator for a $150,000 grant awarded by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and International Scientific Affairs Initiative (OESI), I was able to set out and meet a number of programmatic and professional goals from 2002. As the PI, I was responsible for development of university-based research, extension, and education programs in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, modeled on and linked to the US Sea Grant College Program. The aim was to assess establishing programs and then discuss climate change and coastal resource management issues in the region, and work with stakeholders, universities, and governments to carry out creative policies to cut through complex issues. The State Department extended the grant, and awarded me an extra $20,000 for the purpose of engaging key actors after the “White Water to Blue Water Conference” was held in 2004, spearheaded by NOAA and the State Department in Miami, FL. Leading up to the conference and during it; I served as an international host, convener, trainer, discussant, and facilitator as the initiative took place with myriad actors from the wider Caribbean region. In my role as the Team Lead for Sea Grant International, I led development of the conceptual, institutional, and policy framework to create university based programs for resource management. I managed strategic development, implementation, budget, and grant reporting. I built support within government agencies, with US embassy staff and external partners, including universities and governments in the region. By so doing, I fundraised and leveraged over two million dollars to support program goals, while serving as a liaison between NOAA Research and the Department of State, World Bank, Global Environment Facility, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, NGOs and foreign governments. Congruent to these efforts, I conducted in-depth research for my doctoral degree at Cambridge between 2004 – 2008. My portfolio while at NOAA included working with municipalities, universities and governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, primarily in Central America, while overseeing programmatic efforts in North Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the Pacific Islands with other team members. In relation to Central America, I routinely interacted and collaborated with the US Army War College, US Southern Command, and the US Department of State for the purpose of increasing civil-military coöperation on environmental security in Central America, and other foreign affairs and security related bodies. Often, my interactions in these forums included cooperating with Greenpeace, CI, TNC, and other organizations representing diverse environmental and political interests. During the course of my tenure, I identified the need for, and developed, an International Technical Assistance Program for experts from NOAA, and its cooperative institutes, with the aim of providing systematically targeted technical support to in-country partners. Furthermore, I developed a partnership with the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program to create a mechanism for technical experts to spend up to six weeks providing help to in-country partners at the request of a host university abroad.