Learn more about the 2022 SCBNA Board candidates:

Equity, Inclusion & Diversity Officer

• Brendan N Reid, PhD
  • Board Position: Equity, Inclusion & Diversity Officer
  • I have served as head of the SCBNA Allyship Committee since 2020. With the current EID officer (Gerald Singh), I coordinated a symposium on allyship at NACCB 2020 and initiated a video interview series highlighting the experiences of people from traditionally excluded groups in conservation. I would be honored to continue working with SCBNA on these projects. As the EID officer I would hope to serve as a conduit for all members of the Society to express their concerns and experiences, and I would work with the SCBNA board and coordinate with SCB global and outside organizations to plan effective initiatives that address these concerns at the society level and beyond.

Vice President for Education & Chapters

• Martha Groom, PhD
  • Board Position: Vice President for Education & Chapters
  • I am endlessly fascinated by teaching and learning, and helping people gain capacities and understandings about conservation as a field and practice. I have been teaching conservation since the mid-1990s. Currently, I’m an active member of the Education committee, and have been on the parallel committee of SCB Global in the past. I am the lead author/editor of Principles of Conservation Biology (2006) in its third edition, and currently working on open source exercises in conservation. I co-founded and led a training program for graduate students in interdisciplinary pedagogy at UWB, and for the past nine years have served as the faculty lead of the undergraduate Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at the University of Washington. I have co-led many teaching workshops at NACCB and other conservation meetings, and will co-host an interactive session on conservation literacies at the NACCB at Reno this July. I am particularly interested in supporting exploration of the multiple literacies that could be promoted among conservation students today.

Chapters Representative

• Alysha Cypher, PhD
  • Board Position: Chapters Representative
  • I currently serve on the SCBNA Board as the Chapters Representative and have been active with chapters since 2010. I believe chapters are an integral part of SCB that sets our organization apart from others. With a second term I would dedicate more time towards improving communication between chapters and the SCB structure and expand the reach of chapter events. Chapters rule!

Student Representative

• Anna Weber
  • Board Position: Student Representative
  • Originally hailing from Michigan, Anna is currently a PhD candidate in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of New Orleans (Louisiana), with a focus on evolutionary biology and conservation genetics. Throughout her graduate and undergraduate career, she has gained considerable experience in organizing programs and events through multiple leadership roles. Most recently, she has pushed forward the initial efforts towards unionization of graduate students, faculty and staff at UNO through the United Campus Workers of Louisiana. She has also served as the president of UNO’s Biology Graduate Student Association, where she organized community service, outreach, and social events for graduate students. In all her service roles, Anna identifies the top priorities of group members and organizes programming that caters to those specific needs. She aims to provide “something for everyone”–relevant programming and resources for all disciplines and interests. As Student Representative, Anna hopes to serve as an advocate for her fellow students in the SCB North America section. She strives to enhance SCB’s tradition of providing an educational, inclusive, and welcoming environment for students, where they can be exposed to a broad variety of conservation disciplines, both within and outside academia.

Member at Large

• Ashley Kidd, MS
  • Board Position: Member at Large
  • I have spent the last nine years discovering California’s kelp forests and contributing to ecosystem restoration through conservation aquaculture and field monitoring of the endangered white abalone and giant sea bass. I was a senior aquarist with the Aquarium of the Pacific before obtaining my Master’s in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Florida. My research focused on aquarium based sunflower star recovery after the extirpation of these species from California and Oregon, and am actively collaborating with academic, non profit and community groups to restore this species across its range. It was through my first aquarium exposure at the 2008 SCB in Tennessee that I found myself following this career path in the first place. I am currently serving on several organizing committees for the NACCB 2022 and it was suggested that I apply for a board position. After fourteen years working within our industry and interacting with the public and volunteers, I believe that my background and network will increase the depth of conservation voices and perspectives that will enrich the SCB board and their membership as a board member at large.

• Lauren Jonaitis, MS
  • Board Position: Member at Large
  • I am interested in the Member at Large position because I have been involved with SCB North America (SCBNA) for the past 6 years. I currently serve on the Board as the Member at Large and the Communications Chair and would like to continue my involvement/initiatives. These initiatives include broadening outreach to underrepresented groups in conservation, and actively works to engage groups that have been historically marginalized. My current experience relates to SCBNA’s mission, as I am the Senior Conservation Director of Tropical Audubon Society (TAS), with the main priority to “conserve and restore South Florida ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife and their habitats.” I work closely with local governments and other stakeholders / work towards fostering wise stewardship of native habitats, birds and other indigenous wildlife. In addition, through TAS, I work to advance a more meaningful community understanding of and appreciation for nature and our region’s unique environment and ecological relationships via robust education programs and cultivation of local conservation advocates.

• Fred Van Dyke, PhD
  • Board Position: Member at Large
  • I would like to serve as Member at Large for the SCB Board to use the skills I have developed in organizational leadership to benefit other professionals engaged in conservation. My experience on many boards, not only as a trustee but as a board secretary, treasurer, and chair, can be of value to the SCB at this critical time when effective organizational leadership in conservation is much needed. I also have brought diversity to conservation efforts. As the former Executive Director of the Au Sable Institute, a non-profit conservation organization in Michigan, USA, I engaged the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, a Native American Tribal Nation, as a conservation partner in using sculpin species as indicators of stream habitat quality for the US Forest Service. I added more women to our faculty at Au Sable to serve an increasingly female-dominated student body, and I persuaded scholars from Majority World countries like Uganda to teach Au Sable courses like Forest Ecology to provide our students with a global perspective on solving problems of forest restoration. Professionally I have also been involved in a great diversity of conservation science, including large mammals, bird and plant communities of tallgrass prairies, forest amphibians, endangered species, and restoration of northern US deciduous and coniferous forests. I have mastered skills in prescribed burning, methods of detecting presence, occupancy and abundance of rare species, and mitigation techniques to reduce negative effects of energy development and fossil fuel extraction on wildlife populations. I have authored over 40 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on conservation, including recent publications in Restoration Ecology, PLoS One, and the third edition of a globally-used textbook on conservation biology, Conservation Biology: Foundations, Concepts, Applications (3rd edition, Van Dyke and Lamb, Springer 2020).