Ocean Conservancy
Alexa Sutton Lawrence is the incoming Vice President of Conservation, Justice & Equity at Ocean Conservancy. She previously held the role of Senior Regional Director, Southeast at The Wilderness Society, where her work focused on identifying and protecting endangered & marginalized cultural landscapes on federal public lands. Prior to TWS, Alexa was the Science Policy (SciPol) Program Director in the Initiative for Science & Society at Duke University. In 2017, she completed her Ph.D. in Environment at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, with a Doctoral Certificate in Global Health from the Duke Global Health Initiative; she had previously completed an M.S. in Wildlife & Fisheries Science at Texas A&M and a B.S. in Biology at Howard University. s an undergraduate, she studied the potential of developing an oyster fisheries industry to combat protein shortages in Ghana by looking at the effect of salinity on filtration rates of the West African mangrove oyster at the University of Cape Coast; for her master’s work, she looked at the role that organizational culture and political identities played in determining support for the reintroduction of the white-tailed sea eagle to Scotland; and for her Ph.D., she looked for sustainable, culturally nested solutions to eliminating human-lion conflict in Maasai communities of southwestern Kenya. Alexa is also currently finishing an M.A. thesis in the Department of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, where her research focuses on exploring the spatialized narratives and cultural-ecological histories of the Southeastern Indigenous (esp. the Yesàh/Saponi/Occaneechi/Monacan) communities, including her own ancestors, who migrated from the Piedmont & Central Appalachian Forest (NC, VA) to the Western Allegheny Plateau/North Central Tillplain (OH, IN) between 1805 and 1860. You can see more of her work on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Yj4rDwAAAAJ&hl=en. Alexa is an active member of the Ecological Society of America and the Explorers Club, and a founding member of the Equity, Inclusion & Diversity Committee in the Society for Conservation Biology. She is also a voracious reader, an occasional birder, and has a profound lover for her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.
Wednesday, August 4, 2021
ON DEMAND