Key speakers

We are pleased to feature several key speakers at this year’s conference. Additional 2027 speakers will be announced once their confirmation details are finalized.

Dr. Kristen Voorhies

Biologist and founder of Greenlight Nature Lab for People and Places

What are you unwilling to accept as permanent? Partnering for wetlands starts with us

Wetlands aren’t cared for by science; they are cared for by people. Yet the partnerships between people and nature, and the success of those partnerships, are being disrupted by competing crises: biodiversity loss, climate change, and public distrust of science, all amidst the field’s own evolution. These crises have become intersectional, meaning ecological and social harms overlap and compound each other, and they force us to reckon with our own selves and our own grief.

Dr. Kristen Voorhies explores grief and personal story to better understand the critical need of this moment in conservation: building trust with the people and places we work alongside and treating their knowledge as essential evidence. Sharing her perspectives from federal roles to nonprofit roles and now starting her own business, she reveals how, at the end of the day, authenticity is what matters. She explores how formal scientific knowledge and community-held knowledge can work together rather than compete, and why relationships are what makes environmental work durable and equitable. She points to examples of relational science in our field and in her own work to cultivate a collective call to action: What does it look like to partner for wetlands when we show up as our whole selves?

Dr. Kristen Voorhies will speak on the morning of Wednesday, February 24th.