Conner -
The Scientist

August marks my ten-year anniversary in California, not counting a brief stint in New York after I graduated from Berkeley. Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time I left North Carolina, I came to the Golden State just a year after the formal commissioning of the MPA Network. Like the managers of the network, I’m also reflecting on the last ten years and how I can do my part to contribute to the vision of stewardship outlined in our management plans.

 

Almost a decade later and I still love the California Coast as much as if I were seeing it for the first time. This has only increased since moving to Santa Barbara for graduate school two years ago. That move revitalized my love for surfing and introduced me to spearfishing, deepening my personal connection and reverence for all the ocean provides as I also continue to shape my career around it.

​

As an environmental professional, I am a generalist and a passionate advocate for restoring relationships with the natural world through storytelling, data, and policy analysis. As a recent graduate of the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, my research explores the nexus between sustainable livelihoods, shared ecosystems, and public policy with an emphasis on environmental justice. I seek to promote Native sovereignty and systems of Indigenous Knowledge, frameworks for mixed management of fisheries and coastal resources, and community scale investment in the blue economy. 

​

As a person, I am a musician, hunter, fisher, and surfer always looking for the next excuse to get in the outside and see what I'm working for with my own eyes. As one of my favorite authors Richard Powers writes in The Overstory, “A good answer is worth reinventing from scratch, again and again.” Reinventing our relationship with the natural world may just provide some of the good answers we are in desperate need of.