| Senior Program Manager, Americas
|  | Alexa Montefiore Senior Program Manager, Americas | Alexa Montefiore is the Senior Program Manager for the Americas. She works directly with the Rocky Mountain and Mesoamerica and Caribbean Programs. In this role, she supports strategic planning, partnership development, grants management, civic engagement, communications, facilitating work flow between field programs and NY, and serving as the regional lead for SMART projects. Alexa Montefiore initially joined WCS in 2013 as the Program Manager for the SMART Partnership, which is comprised of WCS, CITES MIKE, NCZ, GWC, FZS, Panthera, Peace Parks Foundation, WWF and ZSL. Prior to joining WCS, Alexa worked at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, focusing on a range of initiatives for social good, with the ultimate goal of helping people live happier, healthier, and safer lives. Alexa has experience with communications and marketing, specifically as it relates to executing traditional and social media relations, content development for a range of print and online materials, strategic planning, and managing and coordinating large teams. Alexa hopes to continue her quest to better society by cultivating innovative programs that make people think and act differently. Alexa also has a Master's Degree from NYU in Environmental Conservation.
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| Northern Rockies Program Lead - Landscape Ecologist
|  | Brent Brock Northern Rockies Program Lead - Landscape Ecologist | Brent Brock received a Bachelor of Science degree in wildlife biology in 1985 and a Master of Science degree in rangeland ecology in 1997 at Kansas State University. He works part-time as a landscape and spatial ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and spends the remainder of his professional time as owner and operator of HoloScene Wildlife Services, LLC; as a private wildlife consultant. He has 30+ years experience focused on applying GIS and spatial analysis in the fields of ecology and conservation science. His work has focused on everything from cockroaches and cicadas to bison and grizzly bears. For the past decade, much of his focus has been on large landscape wildlife connectivity and developing advanced tools to improve land use planning to minimize the impact of rural sprawl on wildlife. He is dedicated to protecting and restoring one of the most biologically intact ecosystems in North America. His current focus is on developing innovative solutions for preserving working lands and improving stewardship for wildlife they contain in the face of increasing threats from rapidly growing human population in the region.
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| Communications Coordinator
|  | Chantal Raguin Communications Coordinator | Chantal Raguin joined WCS as as a communications intern in 2019, and now works as Communications Coordinator. She is also full-time student at Cornell University, on track to receive her BA is philosophy, with a minor in climate change. She has experience with journalism and social media.
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| Director US Field Conservation Programs
|  | Cristina Mormorunni Director US Field Conservation Programs | Most recently, Cristina Mormorunni served has founder and principal of TERRAMAR Consulting Group, which designs and evaluates conservation strategies. She has worked in the conservation arena for +25 years leading international and national conservation programs and developing strategies for non-profits, foundations, and individual donors. She is now the Director of US Field Conservation Programs, and also serves as Regional Director for the Rocky MountainProgram. She received her academic training in Psychology at Connecticut College and University of Washington's Graduate School of Marine Affairs, focusing her master’s research on indigenous marine co-management models and community-based systems for conservation in the North Pacific. She most recently completed a MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the Institute for American Indian Art.
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 | Cynthia Hartway Conservation Scientist | Cynthia Hartway received her Ph.D in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2004. Her specialties are population modeling and quantitative methods in conservation biology. She currently works as a bison project scientist for the Americas program.
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| Senior Conservation Scientist
|  | Joel Berger Senior Conservation Scientist | Dr. Berger directs a number of projects for WCS; among these are the pronghorn migration corridor conservation project and the impact of energy development on wildlife projects in Greater Yellowstone, the impacts of climate change on musk ox in the Alaskan Arctic and the saiga antelope conservation project in Mongolia. Joel received his doctoral degree in biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and subsequently worked for the Smithsonian Institution for 7 years before becoming a tenured full professor at the University of Nevada, Reno (16 years). His current research focuses on the conservation of species and intact ecosystems. He has written 4 books on wild horses, rhinos, bison, and fear in prey species. Joel is also the John J. Craighead Chair in Wildlife Biology at the U of Montana.
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 | Kelsey Pazera Program Associate | Kelsey Pazera is the Program Associate for the Rocky Mountain Region. Through this role she supports strategic partnerships and engagement, elevating science to inspire action and awareness, and supports civic engagement and strategic planning. Before her role at WCS she completed her bachelors in Sociology and Sustainable Development at UCCS where her passion for linking social behavior with preserving and promoting diversity in the natural environment began. Due to her hands on experience throughout the Rockies in various communities, conserving wildlife and wild places and building resilient communities with sustainable food systems has become her life passions.
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| Community Liaison: Indigenous-Led Conservation
| | Kendall Edmo Community Liaison: Indigenous-Led Conservation | Kendall Edmo is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana. Her background is in Environmental Studies and recently accepted into the Earth Science graduate program at Montana State Univeristy where she'll research GIS applications for Cultural Landscape Preservation. For the past 4 years she's been working for the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office where she focuses on cultural and historic preservation, GIS, forest planning and permanant protection of the Badger Two Medicine.
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| Southern Rockies Program Lead
|  | Kina Murphy Southern Rockies Program Lead | Kina Murphy is a conservation biologist whose work has most recently focused on how to increase biodiversity in areas that have been heavily impacted by human land-use change. She has over 20 years of experience working in more than 10 countries where she has focused on everything from Wetland and River Restoration, biodiversity monitoring and market-based approaches to conservation to community-based conservation, planning, policy and conservation finance. Dr. Murphy has extensive experience implementing and managing wetland and river restoration projects in the Southwestern United States. She has also worked in large iconic wetland systems such as the Okavango Delta on human-wildlife conflict issues and with communities, businesses and all levels of government in Botswana, Malawi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mongolia and the U.S. She has a strong background in assisting companies and lenders in adopting and promoting best practices in terms of the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services; coordinating with governments to support the establishment of policies and regulations that foster improved land use management; and creating opportunities for better conservation outcomes from development. She has a Ph.D in Biology from the University of New Mexico that focuses on: Mitigating the Impacts of Human Land-Use Change on Biodiversity: With a focus on large migratory species and a Master’s in Community and Regional Planning from the University of New Mexico.
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| Southwest Borderlands Program Lead
| | Laura Paulson Southwest Borderlands Program Lead | Laura Paulson. Laura is the Southwest Borderlands Program Lead. She is an economist and conservationist with over 20 years of experience working with rural landowners, communities, civil society and government entities in Mexico, Indonesia, the United States and more broadly in Latin America. Her diverse experience includes addressing challenges related to large landscape and species conservation - particularly bison, jaguar, pronghorn antelope, black-tailed prairie dog and grasslands birds- as well as issues related to land trust capacity, agriculture policy, water security and ranching supply chain sustainability through previous roles with The Nature Conservancy’s Mexico and Northern Central America Program, Wildlands Network and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. Laura played a lead role in co-creating the Mexico Sustainable Ranching Roundtable and establishing and managing Mexico’s first conservation bison herd. She currently serves on the Bison Recovery Task Force for Mexico and plays a coordination role with the Borderlands Linkages Partnership, an initiative to promote collaboration among entities working on jaguar conservation in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies. Laura has also served on the Board of the The Northern Jaguar Project for the past nine years.
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