I am an evolutionary anthropologist by training and a mapmaker by profession.
I grew up in Seattle and studied political science (BA) at UCLA. My first professional job was as assistant to Rick Watson, International Programs Director and Vice President of The Peregrine Fund, a preeminent raptor research and conservation institution. There, I helped run international programs directed at keeping threatened raptors in their natural habitats in Latin America, Africa and the Indian Subcontinent. At The Peregrine Fund I also discovered the simple elegance of evolutionary ecology and the geographic patterns it propagates — biogeography.
I studied Evolutionary Anthropology (MSc) under Hillard Kaplan and Jim Brown at the University of New Mexico, focusing on applying biogeographic theory to geographic patterns in human evolutionary ecology — specifically, looking for common algorithms underpinning both patterns in the distribution and abundance of human economic strategies and patterns in the distribution and abundance of biological species. These comparisons, and improved metrics for analyzing economic diversity, continue to be academic passions of mine.
In 2006 I began working with Native Future to map the threatened territorial boundaries of several indigenous communities in Eastern Panama. These maps formed part of a case presented to the Panamanian Government and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and together with the hard work of many people resulted in legislative changes in Panama, creating a legal mechanism for indigenous communities outside established ‘comarcas’ to apply for permanent title to their lands. I now serve on the advisory board of Native Future and continue work to consolidate land-tenure claims for 13 Wounaan communities.
I currently run the GIS shop at the Sonoran Institute in Bozeman, Montana — a planning and conservation NGO working on development and land-use issues in western North America. My work is equal parts science and design.
My dream is to be Mapping or Art Director of a bleeding-edge, molotov-cocktail-throwing, pocket-protector-wearing, money-having, hard-nosed, Scientific Organization. If you are CEO of such, please contact me.
PS: I would also really like to make a big digital atlas of indigenous communities in the Americas.
