Posts in: Reflections

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...

At a conference featuring talks about biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change, you might not expect to have a panel talk focused around how to be personally resilient in the face of such challenges. Yet that’s exactly what COMPASS’ plenary, titled “Building Resilience Starts with Us,” at this year’s North American Congress for Conservat...

When I came across the job posting for my role at COMPASS I completed my application in one sitting, submitting my materials just a couple hours after I found the opening. I felt like I’d finally found the niche I was looking for, a space squarely in between science and solutions.  Starting at COMPASS just over two years ago, I entered the broad and wonderful...