Interview by Tommy Caggiano MEM/MF’15
Tell me about yourself and how your interest in forestry and conservation began.
It started with time outdoors growing up in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, a place that’s both a working forest landscape and a protected region. I saw firsthand how land management decisions shape forests and communities, even if I didn’t yet think of it as “forestry.”
In college, I studied biology with an ecology focus and minored in Spanish. After graduating, I joined the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay, where I worked with farmers in agricultural fields, helped plant native trees, and taught environmental education classes.
That experience was formative. I came to see that forests and communities are deeply intertwined—forests aren’t isolated “natural” spaces; they’re part of how people live and make a living. That realization pushed me toward natural resource management and, eventually, forestry.
What drew you to the Nicholas School, and why did you combine the MEM and MF degrees?
After the Peace Corps, I worked at a land trust, where I learned more about land protection and landscape-scale conservation. Two colleagues there who were Nicholas alumni encouraged me to take a serious look at the school.
I started in the MEM program, thinking broadly about environmental management. By my second semester I added the MF, because many of the issues I cared about—biodiversity, climate resilience, ecosystem services—were rooted in forested landscapes. The MF’s applied fieldwork and technical skills balanced well with the MEM’s policy, planning, and analytical focus. Together, they gave me both practical tools and a big-picture understanding of how forests support people and ecosystems.
Since you graduated, how have you seen the forestry and conservation space evolve?
When I was a student, there was a growing interest in ecosystem services valuation. Carbon got a lot of attention, and still does, but today there’s renewed interest in broader services like biodiversity, water, and habitat connectivity.
One of the biggest shifts is who’s asking the questions. Previously, conservation organizations were leading the charge to put numbers on ecosystem benefits. Now, more of the demand is coming from consumers, companies, and investors who want credible ways to show that forests are delivering multiple benefits, not just wood and fiber.
Large landowners are an important part of this picture. When a company keeps big landscapes in forest, those lands support wildlife habitat, rare species, recreation, and connectivity. Many landowners are looking for ways to document and be recognized for those contributions—through certification, investor reporting, or new revenue streams.
At the same time, there’s more diversification of income from forestlands, including conservation easements, mitigation banking, carbon markets, and recreational or hunting leases. These tools can help keep forests intact while making ownership financially sustainable.
You’ve worked for the U.S. Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and now the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). How have you adapted your skills across those roles?
A learning mindset has been key at every step, along with being intentional about which skills I wanted to build.
Right after graduation, I wanted strong field experience. As an on-the-ground forester with the U.S. Forest Service, I spent essentially every day in the woods. I learned how timber sales are planned and implemented, what happens after harvests, and how to balance silviculture, economics, habitat, water quality, and recreation in a multi-use forest. That “boots on the ground” experience gave me practical credibility when working with others in the field.
At TNC, my work shifted toward collaboration and landscape-scale outcomes. I spent less time in the field and more time bringing together partners with very different goals for forests. That meant developing facilitation and communication skills, learning to listen, and finding common ground while still advocating for conservation. One lesson I took from that time is that difficult conversations are often more productive when you’re standing together in a specific forest, not just talking abstractly in an office or on a video call.
In my current role at SFI, I work at a much larger scale across the U.S. and Canada. I rarely visit specific sites, and I don’t claim to know the details of every operation. Humility and openness are essential. I rely on practitioners in the field and focus on connecting their realities with standards, market expectations, and the growing demand for transparency and accountability in forest management.
Given your experience, are you optimistic about the future of sustainable forestry?
Yes. The challenges are real, but the conditions are promising. There’s strong and growing demand—from individual consumers to global companies and investors—for products that come from responsibly managed forests. At the same time, many landowners and managers are already doing substantial work to steward those forests. So, there are many avenues that Nicholas School grads can take to have an impact in this space.
The opportunity now is to better connect those two sides: making sure that good practices on the ground are visible, verifiable, and valued. When that alignment exists, it creates powerful incentives to keep forests healthy, resilient, and productive for generations to come.
The challenges are real, but the conditions are promising. There’s strong and growing demand—from individual consumers to global companies and investors—for products that come from responsibly managed forests.
