In my career, I have started several new wildlife conservation projects and built the skills needed to lead new organizations. After volunteering in Costa Rica with three sea turtle projects, I co-founded a new nesting beach conservation project, where I recruited volunteers, fundraised, and developed an ecotourism program. With the EcoTeach Foundation, which I helped start, I increased the budget more than 400% over two years and created a successful volunteer program that benefitted conservation and development projects.
I also worked with Rare, a conservation group, on an innovative ecotourism project that trained local residents to start community-based ecotourism companies. With Ocean Conservancy, I built my fundraising and writing skills as a grant writer for four years. To date, I have raised roughly $6 million for conservation. In 2007, I founded SEE Turtles, a new project that protects sea turtles through tourism. I am now directing the project through an expansion to new sites and scaling up the model, which will be SEEtheWILD.
I spent more than a year living in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. I worked at a turtle nesting beach in Gandoca where I met my future wife and then started a new turtle project with her in Cahuita. I also spent time at the Punta Mona organic farm in the Gandoca-Manzanillo working with Costa Rican Adventures. The area has an unparalleled mixture of wildlife, incredible landscapes, and diverse cultures.
I want to help make tourism a force for wildlife conservation by supporting field research and protection efforts, benefitting local communities, and advocating for sustainable development. The travel industry needs to invest in the natural resources and communities that make their businesses viable through their tours and their political power and become more transparent in how their trips impact wildlife and residents.
I have worked in sea turtle conservation and ecotourism for 10 years, with organizations including Ocean Conservancy, Rare, and Asociacion ANAI (Costa Rica). I have also worked with or consulted for several ecotourism companies, including EcoTeach and Costa Rican Adventures. A co-founder of SEE Turtles, I lead project implementation, including working with tour operators and conservation partners, giving educational presentations, fundraising, and developing promotional materials. In addition, I have co-authored several abstracts on turtle conservation in Costa Rica and turtle watching best practices. I have a BS in Environmental Economics from Pennsylvania State University with a minor in Economics.
