Who We Are
To contact the Conservation Support program at WCS, please send an email to conservationsupport@wcs.org. If you’d like to learn more about the members of our team, click on the names or photos below.
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Alfred DeGemmis
Program Assistant
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Specialities:
- Meeting Coordination
- Editing Reports
- General Administrative Support
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Alfred DeGemmis is the Program Assistant for Conservation Support. Prior to joining Conservation Support, Alfred worked as a Field Coordinator in WCS Public Affairs, where he had been involved with special projects since the summer of 2009. He worked extensively on a campaign to protect funding for non-profit cultural organizations in New York City, while researching wildlife policy issues and providing support to Public Affairs’ special events such as Run for the Wild. Alfred graduated from Connecticut College in 2010 with a double major in Environmental Studies and English, and has studied in England, UK and Miami, FL. He is interested in the logistics and politics of global conservation.
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Program Officer: Conservation Leadership Programme
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Christina Imrich
Program Officer: Conservation Leadership Programme
Primary contact for:
Conservation Leadership Programme |
Specialities:
- Grant Management
- Monitoring and Evaluation
- Project Management
- Outdoor Education
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Christina Imrich is the WCS Program Officer for the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP). The CLP is a partnership of WCS, Conservation International, BirdLife International, and Flora and Fauna International which administers grants and ongoing support to young conservationists across the world. Christina manages the CLP alumni network, CLP-supported internships at WCS, and the development of training opportunities. She has a Master’s of Professional Studies in Environmental Studies from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, as well as a Certificate of Advanced Study in Leadership of International and Non-Governmental Organizations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Her undergraduate degree was in Biology at the College of the Holy Cross.
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Danielle LaBruna
GIS Specialist
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Specialities:
- Sprawl development and conservation
- GIS
- Project management
- Historical ecology
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Danielle obtained her Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from James Madison University and her Master's degree in Conservation Biology from Columbia University. She joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2004 as a GIS intern and has held several positions since then. Before joining Conservation Support, she worked as an Outreach Coordinator/GIS Analyst for the Metropolitan Conservation Alliance and as Project Manager for the Mannahatta Project.
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Dr. David S Wilkie
Director
Primary contact for:
USAID TransLinks
USAID SCAPES |
Specialities:
- Strategic Planning
- Livelihoods Surveys
- Bushmeat Hunting
- Grant Writing
- Meeting Facilitation
- Human Rights
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David S. Wilkie is the Director of Conservation Support, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Boston College and a wildlife ecologist specializing in human behavioral ecology and anthropology. David works to understand the socio-economic and institutional factors driving the conservation or unsustainable use of natural resources. He has published extensively, on topics including: the impacts of NTFP commercialization on forest conservation; the role of logging in the commercial bushmeat trade; factors that determine demand for bushmeat; and direct payments for biodiversity conservation. His responsibilities include monitoring, adaptive management and the development and dissemination of strategic planning tools. He also develops and documents best practices for integrating biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation and the equitable governance of natural resources. David is the chief of party for the USAID TransLinks and SCAPES LWAs to WCS. He helped to establish the Conservation Measures Partnership, is co-director of the Ituri Forest Peoples Fund, and has been a co-chair of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force.
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Emily Sahl
Program Officer
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Specialities:
- Budget and Reporting
- Grant Management
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Emily Sahl earned a B.A. degree in International Politics from Penn State University. After working at a publishing company in New Jersey for 2 years, she chose to pursue a career in the not-for-profit world and joined WCS in 2009 as the Membership Assistant in the Membership and Fundraising Department. Emily is currently a Program Officer for Conservation Support, where she is responsible for tracking Conservation Support budgets and expenditures. She also provides annual budget, work planning, and proposal budget support for Program Development.
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Spatial Ecologist and Conservation Planner
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Dr. Karl Didier
Spatial Ecologist and Conservation Planner
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Specialities:
- Project Planning & Miradi
- Spatial Modeling (Species, Threats)
- Reserve Network Design (Marxan)
- GIS/Remote Sensing
- Forest & Grassland Ecology
- Landscape Species Approach
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Karl Didier leads Conservation Support’s efforts to train WCS staff on useful tools for planning and managing their conservation projects, and supports WCS projects’ spatial analyses and modeling. This support includes modeling species distributions using advanced statistical techniques (e.g., MaxEnt, Regression Trees), mapping human activities/threats and their impacts (e.g., hunting, deforestation) and future scenario modeling for conservation planning. Karl’s doctoral research (at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry) focused on the impacts of natural and anthropogenic disturbance on forests, and his master’s research (SUNY-CESF) focused on modeling potential locations for elk (Cervus elaphus) restoration in New York State. Recently, he has developed a strong interest in Latin American conservation, and has worked in Brazil and Argentina. Karl is based in Gainesville and is adjunct faculty at the University of Florida, where he teaches a graduate course in conservation planning and adaptive management.
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Kate Mastro
Program Officer
Primary Contact for:
Graduate Scholarship Program
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Specialities:
- Grant Management
- Project Management
- Designing and Editing Reports
- Meeting Coordination
- General Programmatic Support
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Kate Mastro has been with WCS since 2005, working for the Training and Capacity Building Program, the Living Landscapes Program and the WCS Institute, among others. At Providence College, she studied Spanish and Public and Community Service Studies, as well as Humanities. While an undergraduate, she interned with an organization focusing on empowering women, FINCA Perú, located in Ayacucho. In Peru, Kate worked with a community-led daycare, soup kitchen and local women’s group. Kate received a Master’s degree in Global Affairs focusing on issues concerning gender, race and class from Rutgers University in May 2010. She is currently a Program Officer for Conservation Support where she is responsible for managing the Graduate Scholarship Program.
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GIS Analyst and Developer
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Kim Fisher
GIS Analyst and Developer
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Specialities:
- Spatial Analysis
- GIS Programming
- Web-Based Applications
- Species Range-Wide Priority Setting
- Landscape Species Approach
- Conceptual Modeling
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Kim Fisher works in Conservation Support as a GIS analyst and developer, assisting WCS staff with a broad range of spatial analyses. Most recently, Kim has focused on disturbance modeling, ecological network visualization, and web application development for the Mannahatta and Welikia Projects (http://welikia.org), as well as on analysis scripts and web application development for a project analyzing and visualizing the effects of over-the-horizon consumption (http://over-the-horizon-consumption.org/index.php). He joined WCS in 2007, after seven years as a principal of the web development firm Square Water. Kim studied anthropology at Reed College and, although he now grudgingly admits to being a New York native, he spent several childhood years in Nepal and continues to leap at every opportunity to travel, hike and climb.
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Program Officer, Information Management
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LiLing Choo
Program Officer, Information Management
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Specialities:
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LiLing Choo joined WCS in the summer of 2009. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College in Architecture History and Theory, with a focus on low-income and sustainable housing development. LiLing has experience at a wide range of non-profit organizations and environments, including research assistantship at The Earth Institute on a Hurricane Katrina-related project that analyzed disaster vulnerability. She is currently the Program Officer for Information Management.
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Lisa Hickey
GIS specialist
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Specialities:
- Spatial Analysis
- Geographic Information Systems
- Program Management
- Hunting and Wildlife Trade
- Human-Wildlife Conflict
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Lisa Hickey currently works as a GIS Technician for the Conservation Support Program. She joined WCS in 2007 as the Program Manager for WCS’s Hunting and Wildlife Trade Program, where she conducted reviews of the trade in wildlife and ivory in New York City. Lisa is interested in the application of spatial analysis to problems of landscape ecology, habitat fragmentation and human-wildlife interactions and has modeled suitable habitat for tigers in Northeast China, swift fox in Montana and moose in the Adirondacks. She has conducted research on compensation mechanisms to address human wildlife conflict, and has worked on field research projects with snow leopards in Nepal and sea turtles in Barbados. She has a Master’s degree in Conservation Biology from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in Geography from the University of London.
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London Davies
Program Manager
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Specialities:
- Grant Management
- Grant Proposal Budgeting
- Operations
- Business Planning
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London Davies, the Program Manager for Conservation Support, is responsible for managing the team’s programmatic operations. This includes the management of grants, oversight of budgets and the coordination of administrative support. She has extensive operations management experience in both the non-profit and sustainable business sectors, having worked in a variety of roles from Wildlife Educator to Operations Manager for a small eco-fashion business with a wildlife conservation mission. She holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University and received an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business in 2009. Her MBA specialization was in Marketing and Social Innovation and Impact.
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Conservation Planning Specialist
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Lynn Duda
Conservation Planning Specialist
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Specialities:
- Training Design and Evaluation
- Grant Management
- Meeting Facilitation
- Event Planning
- Wildlife Management Techniques (e.g., Bird Banding, Radio-Telemetry, Mist-Netting)
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Lynn Duda, Conservation Planning Specialist, focuses on assisting WCS projects and programs in conservation planning, adaptive management, and monitoring effectiveness. In her previous role at WCS, Lynn worked with the Conservation Leadership Programme coordinating and facilitating trainings in Colombia, Kenya, Lao PDR, China, and Canada. Before joining WCS in 2006, she worked as a field ornithologist studying birds in North and South America and the Caribbean, which helped advance her language skills in French and Spanish and basic Portuguese. She also taught Wildlife Management Field Techniques at the University of Rhode Island, managed a migratory bird banding station, and led a conservation field semester abroad program for undergraduates in the Ecuadorian Andes. Lynn earned a BA in French and International Relations from Ursinus College and a Master’s in Biology from Southeastern Louisiana University.
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Program Manager: Global Education and Outreach
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Nalini Mohan
Program Manager: Global Education and Outreach
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Specialities:
- Conservation Education: Strategy, Implementation and Evaluation
- Educator Training
- Education Materials Design and Development
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Nalini Mohan, Global Education and Outreach Program Manager, focuses on education/outreach strategy development, implementation and evaluation. Nalini previously worked for nine years as a WCS International Teacher Trainer, teaching conservation education techniques and developing educational materials for educators and other audiences in China, Cuba, Costa Rica, Lao PDR, Guatemala, India and Papua New Guinea. She coordinated the WCS Conservation Education and Outreach Fellows program which invited exceptional educators from around the world to New York for three weeks of advanced training. She has a BSc in Zoology and Psychology and a Master’s in Education, both from the University of Toronto, as well as experience in zoo education and international development.
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Dr. Robert A. Rose
Geographer
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Specialities:
- REDD Baseline Deforestation Modeling
- Species Range-Wide Priority Setting
- Landscape Ecology
- Remote Sensing
- Geographic Information Systems
- Land Cover Change Analysis
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Robert A. Rose joined WCS in January 2007 after receiving his PhD in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation research focused on models of land cover change in the Upper Midwest, United States and the use of landscape ecology metrics to understand the changing pattern of land cover. Robert has previously worked on numerous conservation projects, including: human-wolf conflicts in northern Wisconsin; human-elephant conflicts in Cameroon; land use and conflict in Uganda; deforestation analysis in the Amazon; and the impact of fences around Kenyan national parks. Robert continues to assess and model landcover change over time, now focusing on using models of change to predict future, unplanned deforestation for REDD projects around the world. He is also the lead for Species Range-Wide Priority Setting (RWPS) activities and the WCS lead on a collaborative on-line course called Introduction to Conservation Geographic Information Systems. This course will be presented to global conservationists as an eLearning tool to build GIS capacity across conservation organizations.
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Dr. Samantha Strindberg
Biostatistician
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Specialities:
- Wildlife Monitoring
- Wildlife Survey Techniques Training
- Survey Design
- Statistical Analysis and Modeling
- Strategic Planning
- Software Development
- Geographic Information Systems
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Samantha Strindberg majored in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She worked for the Research Unit for Wildlife Population Assessment in St Andrews, Scotland and completed a PhD in Statistics on optimized automated survey design for wildlife population assessment at the University of St Andrews. In 2001, she joined WCS as a quantitative conservation scientist. Samantha provides statistical design and analysis assistance focusing especially on the challenge of using continually evolving specialized wildlife survey techniques (e.g., distance sampling, mark-recapture, patch occupancy). She provides training on the application of monitoring techniques for conservation management, is interested in the statistical modeling of ecological relationships relevant to management, and helps with strategic conservation planning (including the development of conceptual models and monitoring frameworks, the selection of conservation targets using the Landscape Species Selection decision-support software that she developed, and GIS mapping for the Landscape Species Approach).
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Senior Conservation Scientist and Biostatistician
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Dr. Tim O’Brien
Senior Conservation Scientist and Biostatistician
Primary contact for:
Tropical Ecology Assessment & Monitoring (TEAM) Network |
Specialities:
- Wildlife Monitoring Survey Design
- Statistical Analysis
- Forest & Savanna Ecology
- Impacts of Climate Change
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Tim O'Brien has worked in the field of conservation since 1974, and for WCS since 1990. He received both his MSc Zoology and MStat from North Carolina State University and his PhD in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida. Tim has authored or co-authored numerous scientific publications and 2 books; his specialties include tropical forest and savanna wildlife communities, and his current research concerns expanding the use of camera trap surveys to monitor components of biodiversity and to study species richness, abundance and occupancy. He has lived and worked on four continents and has studied Asian hornbills, primates, elephants and tigers. Tim currently coordinates WCS-TEAM tropical forest monitoring sites and is a Conservation Fellow at the Zoological Society of London, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Tropical Research/UCLA, a Research Associate at the Mpala Research Centre and a former Research Fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
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Research and Policy Advisor
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Tom Clements
Research and Policy Advisor
Cambodia REDD Taskforce Advisor |
Specialities:
- Conservation Effectiveness Analysis
- PES and REDD+ Policy Development
- Conservation Incentive Schemes
- REDD Project Development
- Livelihood/Poverty Assessments
- Attitude Surveys
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Tom Clements studied Biological Sciences at Oxford University and worked at the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford University, conducting conservation and research projects in Brazil and the Philippines. He began working for WCS in Cambodia in 2002, initially focusing on the development of biological monitoring programs for WCS projects in that country. Since 2003, he led the development of the Northern Plains landscape project, including supporting the establishment of two protected areas, community land-use planning and community conservation agreements. He continues to advise on biological monitoring and the use of direct payments to local communities for conservation. Recent work has included the development of sustainable financing options (e.g. ecotourism, REDD) for WCS landscapes, strategic planning, poverty assessment and analysis of the effectiveness of conservation programs. In October 2008, he began his PhD work on direct payments, at Cambridge University and Imperial College London. Since 2009 he has served as the lead advisor to the Cambodia REDD Taskforce on the development of a national REDD strategy.
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