B.S. Biology, Acadia University
M.S. Zoology, University of the Witwatersrand
Ph.D. Animal Ecology, Uppsala University

Teaching is one of life’s greatest passions for me. I’ve taught mainly masters and PhD students in both classroom and remote African field settings about environmental futures, conservation biology and climate change, natural history, bird ringing, ecology and evolutionary biology, global and national public policy, environmental leadership, and science communications around biodiversity and climate change. I am a longtime global mentor, academic supervisor, life and leadership coach and professor for young professionals, especially African women working in STEM.

I am now putting my entire energies into shifting civilizations towards a kinder, wiser, and much more sustainable pathway – based on Earth repair, climate repair, and the reconnection of humanity with Nature and with each other. I’ve worked on diverse sustainability and biodiversity issues, large and small — from ecoregional and national biodiversity and climate change strategic planning, policy and implementation, and the global status and trends of ecosystems and their ability to support human health, livelihoods and wellbeing (in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – I was a global board and executive committee member and scenarios group member), to ecological vulnerability and adaptation of endemic birds of the fynbos biome. I was previously lead scientist of the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s Climate Change Bioadaptation Division and founding head of its Biodiversity Futures Program, co-leading an international and interdisciplinary global change ecology team of postdocs, PhD and MSc students, and coworkers from the universities of Durham, Cambridge University/ RSPB, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, KwaZulu-Natal, Cape Peninsula Technology, and Queensland. Our work has shed light on patterns of biodiversity and endemism, past, present and future in southern Africa, and on endemics’ vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in fragmented, fire-prone landscapes. Before all that, I founded and led Namibia’s first national biodiversity and climate change programmes, for which I was awarded the global Distinguished Service Award of the Society for Conservation Biology (in the same year as Sir David Attenborough and Dame Prof Georgina Mace in different categories – a huge thrill).

It’s hard to narrow down my interests! I’m an environmental and societal futures analyst and sustainability scientist and strategist – a global change ecologist, biodiversity conservation biologist, climate risk and resilience specialist, and policy wonk. At the same time, I am a film co-producer, public speaker, writer and storyteller at the intersection of science, society, sustainability, policy, planning, media and the future.  I found and lead a number of global initiatives designed to shift societies in a wiser direction. Most recently I’m co-founder (with John D. Liu) and co-convenor (with Leo Iyamuremye) of the Global Restoration Collaborative, affiliate prof at UW Bothell and UW Seattle, honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology and the African Climate and Development Initiative, and of Oxford University’s Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Stockholm Environment Institute’s Oxford Centre. I’m a member of the Club of Rome’s Planetary Emergency Partnership and other initiatives in the global futures, system change and conservation spaces.