I am an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and speaker who explores how conservation-minded people are adapting to the diverse, concurrent, and human-caused ecological changes that Earth is experiencing. I completed an undergrad in biology at the University of Guelph, a Master’s in botany at the University of Toronto, and an interdisciplinary PhD in science and society at the University of California–Santa Barbara, and I am now a Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS) and affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change at the University of Waterloo, where I advise a team of grad students and post-docs. I have held several significant service roles, currently as the Associate Dean – Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo.
I have been a visiting scholar at Linköping University (Sweden) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), and have delivered over 100 lectures to more than 6,000 people — including more 25 keynotes and invited plenary lectures, at conferences and workshops in sixteen countries on six continents. I have published over 70 refereed journal articles and book chapters, often in high-impact journals including BioScience, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Global Environmental Change, Science, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution. In 2011 Yale University Press published my first sole-authored book, Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining Our Relationship with Nature, which was awarded the 2011 Oravec Research Award by the National Communication Association.
In addition to my current role as an Associate Dean, I am the domain editor for “Climate, Ecology and Conservation” at the journal WIREs Climate Change (IF = 7.1). I have previously served as Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in my department, on the editorial board of the journal Diversity and Distributions, and on the board of directors of World Wildlife Fund–Canada, Ontario Nature (as President), and the Invasive Species Centre (as Chair). For further details about my experiences and leadership roles, please see my CV.
