Posts in: Reflections

This year, COMPASS is celebrating over 25 years of supporting science communication and engagement. Since our founding, we’ve had the privilege of learning alongside tens of thousands of passionate professionals who are working on some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges of our time — from conservation to wildfire management, marine carbon ...

Summer is here! For many on our team the longer days usually involve finding a warm, sunny spot to dive into a great book. And there's few things better to do after reading a great book than to share it with others. So whether you're looking for a book to guide, entertain, or inspire you, we hope you consider checking out some of our team's picks. And don't forget ...

La’ Portia J. Perkins is part of COMPASS’s 2023 Wilburforce Leaders in Conservation Science. They are a multi-medium artist, poet, rapper, and natural resource scientist. They currently serve as a Project Manager at the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, helping develop science, tools, and strategies for wind and solar siting and operations that minimize impa...

The environmental history of the southeastern United States — as in many parts of the “New World” — was irrevocably changed by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. European colonization decimated Indigenous and Native communities, and the need for resources and cheap labor drove economic growth as the world entered the Industrial Revolution. While the landscape ...

My journey with COMPASS began 12 years ago, when I was a newish Program Officer at Wilburforce Foundation, trying to find ways for science to more effectively inform conservation. We quickly developed a rewarding partnership: I was able to support COMPASS in expanding their scope beyond the ocean realm, and COMPASS brought their deep knowledge in training, connecti...

One of the most challenging (and exciting!) aspects of communication is that our audience is never a blank canvas. Rather, getting to know them is more like trying to interpret a Jackson Pollock painting¹. Before we’ve even shared a single word, the person we’re looking to connect with already has a set of existing, entwined beliefs about the world, themselves...