Who We Are

Li-Ling Choo is the Program Officer for Information Management in Conservation Support. She provides data management and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) support to WCS global conservation programs. Prior to this position, she served as the administrative assistant for multiple crosscutting programs, providing support with workshops, financial administration and other programmatic activities. Her experience in the non-profit sector also includes working as a research assistant at The Earth Institute on a Hurricane Katrina-related project that analyzed disaster vulnerability. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College in Architectural History and Design Theory, with a focus on low-income and sustainable housing development.

Samantha Strindberg has worked as a quantitative conservation scientist in the Global Conservation Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) since 2001. She provides statistical design and analysis assistance to WCS colleagues around the world, which often involves visits to field sites in order to gain a good understanding of local conditions. Samantha focuses on the application of cutting-edge specialized wildlife survey techniques to species that are frequently wide-ranging or elusive. She designs surveys conducted under difficult field conditions and refines existing wildlife assessment methods when needed. The combination of solid field data and the often complex statistical modeling she conducts are vital to understanding species requirements and current status, ensuring the implementation of appropriate long-term conservation strategies.

Samantha also designs monitoring programs to assess the effectiveness of conservation activities. She provides workshops on monitoring techniques for conservation management, as well as on strategic conservation planning, including the development of conceptual models and monitoring frameworks. She develops analytical and decision-support software applications as part of her work, such as the Landscape Species Selection software used in the selection of conservation targets. Occasionally, she has the pleasure of participating in field work, most often in cetacean surveys.

Samantha holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. While at St Andrews, she was a member of the Research Unit for Wildlife Population Assessment (RUWPA), a leading research group specializing in statistical methods for wildlife assessment. She implemented the visual data display and the survey design component of the Distance software, and initially joined RUWPA to design and develop the International Whaling Commission’s Database-Estimation Software System. Samantha originally majored in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.