VIMS

Kristin France

Ph.D. 2007

Current Position: Senior Conservation Scientist: The Nature Conservancy (New York)
VIMS Advisor(s): {{http://www.vims.edu/people/duffy_je,Dr. Emmett Duffy}}

Profile

A 2007 alumna of the Ph.D. program at VIMS, France is now the Senior Conservation Scientist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in New York, where she helps to identify imperiled ecosystems and to develop effective conservation strategies for those areas. Her home base is TNC’s Central & Western New York chapter, which includes the Finger Lakes as well as areas along lakes Ontario and Erie.

At TNC, France co-chairs a statewide climate-change team, helping to coordinate all of the climate change-related work in New York State. France says she and her co-chair, “help set the team’s strategic direction, keep the pieces moving together and the channels of communication between different projects open and flowing, and help acquire funding for the work while connecting our work in New York to the efforts of larger organizations of TNC.”

France says VIMS helped her acquire a skill set to be able to “answer questions about what we need to know, rather than what it would be neat to know.”

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