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Tag: 2019

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Speakers

Dr. Kate Rodriguez-Clark

DR. KATE RODRIGUEZ-CLARK

Population Ecologist, Smithsonian National Zoo

Kate recently joined the National Zoo after more than 15 years as a staff scientist in the Population Ecology and Genetics Lab at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), in Caracas, Venezuela. She started at IVIC fresh out of graduate school at Cambridge and Princeton, and followed her time there with two years as an associate researcher at the Venezuelan conservation NGO Provita. Her PhD research focused on examining the effects of modern zoo population management on quantitative genetic variation in captivity and the wild, and her early work in Venezuela focused on helping zoos there develop an effective ex-situ conservation strategy for Andean bears, taking into account both wild and captive population pressures. In her new role as a National Zoo Secretary Scholar, Kate collaborates with colleagues across the Smithsonian and around the world to understand and manage the demographic and genetic challenges faced by NZP/SCBI’s huge diversity of ex situ populations, in order to ensure the integration and success of the Smithsonian’s in situ and ex situ conservation efforts.

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Advance Team Staff

Allison Alberty

ALLISON ALBERTY

Advance Team Member

Allison Alberty is the K12 Coordinator in the Office of Admissions at George Mason University and is both a WJMC and George Mason alumna. She received her BA in Communication and concentration in Public Relations in Spring of 2023 and is currently pursuing an MA in Strategic Communication. In her free time, Allison enjoys attending rock concerts, yoga sessions, adopting plants, and finding new brunch spots!

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Speakers

Claudia Quintanilla

CLAUDIA QUINTANILLA

Director of Capacity Development, Rare

Claudia is passionate about contributing to community and environmental well-being.

In her current role as Director of Capacity Development at Rare, she guides and supports the creation of training and program delivery support tools for the implementation of the Fish Forever program in the Philippines, Indonesia, Mozambique, Brazil and Mesoamerican Reef Region. Her previous Rare experiences include Training Director for the Brazil and Latin America offices which included coordinating the customization, execution and evaluation of global curriculum for the fisheries management, reciprocal water agreements and alumni programs implementing projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.

Prior to joining Rare, she was Peace Corps Mexico’s Technical Trainer for the Technology Transference and Environmental Programs and Peace Corps Honduras’ Programming & Training Specialist for the Protected Areas Management Program. Before that, she worked with the European Union and ChildFund on consultant projects in environmental education and risk management with public school teachers, communities and municipal leaders in Central America; taught an undergraduate Ecology class for nearly five years and conducted numerous qualitative environmental assessments. Claudia holds Environmental Engineering and Management degrees.

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Speakers

Renee Grebe

RENEE GREBE

Northern Virginia Conservation Advocate, Nature Forward

Renee Grebe is Nature Forward’s Northern Virginia Conservation Advocate. With a background in user-experience design, she brings her ability to see issues from many sides in order to determine the best path forward to the field of environmental advocacy and education. She serves on Fairfax County’s Environmental Quality Advisory Council, leads invasive plant removals through Fairfax County’s IMA program, installed a rain garden on her homeowner association’s common property, and has been certified as a Virginia Master Naturalist since 2014.

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Speakers

Christine McCoy

Christine McCoy is a solid waste and recycling professional who has worked for the public, private, and nonprofit sectors of the industry, focusing on reuse, waste prevention, recycling composting, and energy-from-waste. Ms. McCoy became interested in solid waste during a stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Commonwealth of Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean. Upon her return to the U.S., Christine obtained a M.A. in Cultural and Environmental Geography from Louisiana State University, where she focused on sustainable solid waste management on small islands of the Caribbean. Christine is also a past board member of the NRC and the Virginia Recycling Association.

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Speakers

Brandt Ryder, Ph.D.

BRANDT RYDER, PH.D.

Research Scientist

Brandt was born and raised in Acton, MA and was a naturalist from an early age. He received his bachelors of science in 1999 from a small environmental school in Maine called Unity College. Brandt completed his Ph.D. in Biology in 2008 from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Dr. Ryder has worked as a Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute for the las 10 years. Brandt is a broadly trained avian ecologist that works on the migration, behavior and conservation of birds. His research program leverages novel tracking approaches to study the complex social networks of animals and document the movement patterns of migratory birds. Effective conservation requires understanding when and where birds face threats and how social systems contribute to population persistence.

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Speakers

Tracey Barnes

TRACEY BARNES

Senior Animal Keeper, Great Cats and Bears, Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Tracey Barnes is a senior animal keeper at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park, where she began as a keeper aide in the Mammal Department in 1994. She has been involved with the care of everything from elephant shrews to elephants (including a number of non-mammals), but her areas of specialty have been primarily bears, great cats, cheetahs and hoofstock. For the past 17 years, she has worked exclusively for the Great Cats and Bears Unit, where she currently cares for African lions, Amur and Sumatran tigers, Andean bears, small cats and other small carnivores, a variety of rodents, and domestic farm animals.

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Speakers

Kristina Vsevolodova

KRISTINA VSEVOLODOVA

Research Intern, Elephants

Kristina is a lifelong animal lover. Currently she lives in the outer suburbs of Washington DC, however she spent majority of her adult life down under in Australia. Kristina graduated from The University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Science and a major in Zoology. With her degree she was fortunate enough to have the flexibility to explore different subjects as she was unsure as to what her future held. In the end she focused on conservation genomics, a field to which she had never been exposed before. This led Kristina to return to her childhood ambition of working in wildlife conservation and, given this opportunity at the Smithsonian National Zoo, she is on her way to living her dream.

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Speakers

Tremaine (Tremie) Gregory, Ph.D

TREMAINE (TREMIE) GREGORY, PH.D

Research Scientist

Tremie is an ecologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation and Sustainability. Her work focuses on the impacts of hydrocarbon development activity on wildlife in the Amazon and methods to mitigate such impacts. Currently, she is studying the impacts of the construction of an hydrocarbon pipeline on terrestrial and arboreal mammals. She is using innovative technologies such as camera traps and drones to evaluate impacts. Tremie pioneered methods in arboreal camera trapping to test the effectiveness of natural canopy bridges over a pipeline right-of-way in mitigating forest fragmentation. Her findings could help improve best practices in pipeline construction across the Amazon to reduce impacts on arboreal and terrestrial wildlife.

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Speakers

Dawn Zimmerman

DR. DAWN ZIMMERMAN

Associate Director, Global Health Program

Dr. Dawn Zimmerman is the associate program director for the Global Health Program where she focuses on coordinating international teams on the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT programs in Myanmar and Kenya. These teams work to detect the next pandemic human pathogens by investigating
the animals most likely to harbor them. Zimmerman’s field experience includes wildlife work and capacity building in the Russian Far East, Madagascar, Namibia, El Salvador, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through a University of California at Davis position as the regional veterinary manager for Gorilla Doctors, Zimmerman worked with USAID PREDICT in Uganda and Rwanda from 2011 to 2013. Her primary research interests include applying a One Health approach to the conservation of critically endangered wildlife species and the mitigation of emerging infectious diseases at the wildlife-human interface.

Zimmerman has worked in the field of zoological and wildlife medicine for over 14 years. She completed her Master of Science from San Diego State University and her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Ross University. Her master’s degree work focused on development of techniques for reproductive assistance in exotic canids and she has a particular interest in the conservation of African carnivores.