Up to Table of Contents

Ahead to THE VIEW FROM NAIROBI AND LONDON

SCB EXECUTIVE OFFICE LAUNCHED

The Society for Conservation Biology is pleased to welcome Dr. Alan D. Thornhill as Executive Director and to announce that the long-awaited Executive Office was launched on 1 October 2001. Under Alan's expert guidance, the Executive Office will enable SCB to carry out its business more efficiently and effectively. The new office also will help SCB accomplish much more in terms of providing information to policy-makers and conservation groups and aligning with other scientific societies to combat biological illiteracy and lobby for more funding for conservation research and action.

Visitors to the SCB website have long been familiar with Alan's contributions to the mission and smooth functioning of SCB. His many additional talents and vision for the future, summarized below, particularly impressed the selection committee that he is the right person for the critical position of Executive Director.

SCB also is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Parish has joined SCB as Manager of the Executive Office. Parish formerly served as Assistant Program Coordinator of The Nature Conservancy's David H. Smith Conservation Research Program. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Biology and a Naturalist Certificate from the Au Sable Environmental Institute. With her strong leadership, interpersonal, and motivational skills and extensive experience in education and communications, Elizabeth is an ideal person to manage SCB's daily operations.

Alan Thornhill studied the population genetics and ecology of temperate orchids to earn his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine in 1996. In addition, he co-published numerous articles on estimating species extinction rates based on population distributions and land conversion patterns. In the same year the internet was born, Alan started his own internet consulting company (DataDrive.com) to pay the bills of graduate school.

As a young graduate student, Alan completed a tropical ecology course through the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). This happy experience convinced him to pursue the field of conservation biology and to join SCB. It also led him to believe that field courses provide powerful opportunities to affect young minds and to ground ecological studies in the natural world. Before completing his Ph.D., Alan taught two field courses in the tropics of Mexico. He later developed and taught a new tropical field ecology course as well as coordinating the OTS course Tropical Biodiversity.

In 1994, Alan envisioned an online clearinghouse of information on conservation biology. Combining his passion for the discipline and his skill with internet technologies, he launched the Center for Conservation Biology Network (CCBN: conbio.net). The CCBN grew, and with outside funding became a premiere resource for teachers, students, and practitioners of conservation. In 1997, Alan produced and added SCB's website to the CCBN. Through the CCBN, working with various partners, he helped designed and build the Directory of Programs in Conservation Biology, the Directory of Environmental Programs, and the Virtual Library for Biodiversity and Ecology.

In 1996, Alan joined the faculty of Rice University. In addition to teaching many courses including ecology and evolutionary biology, tropical ecology, and botany, he explored how technology affects the way we teach and learn. Initially a small research project, the scope of this work grew into a million-dollar per year research and development center with a dozen staff. After five years in academics, and moving further away from conservation than he was comfortable with, Alan joined The Nature Conservancy as Director of Learning and Communications for the Conservation Science Division. Seven months later, he became Executive Director of SCB.

Alan spent his childhood in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, fascinated and intrigued by the diversity of life around him. He is drawn to protect that diversity, and, as Executive Director of SCB, brings himself fully to this task.

Society for Conservation Biology Executive Office
4245 North Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203, USA
(703) 276-2384
FAX (703) 525-8024
Alan Thornhill, Executive Director, athornhill@conbio.org
Elizabeth Parish, Operations Manager, eparish@conbio.org

Up to Table of Contents

Ahead to THE VIEW FROM NAIROBI AND LONDON