NATURAL CAPITAL PROJECT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director of Research Impact / Lead Scientist
- Lead Scientist for the Natural Capital Project Based at Stanford
Adrian Vogl (she/her) is a Lead Scientist for the Natural Capital Project based at Stanford, and also works as a Consultant with The World Bank Group. Adrian's work crosses the spectrum of researchers, policymakers, and civil society groups in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the US, to advance the science and practice of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions for water security. Her focus is on how land and forest management impact water resources, particularly in the face of changing and uncertain climate conditions. Her work is problem-driven, with an emphasis on developing standardized approaches, tailored tools (e.g., RIOS, ROOT), and building capacity to assess and map ecosystem services and their values, and connect these benefits to communities.
Through her work at The World Bank, Adrian leads a team mapping and assessing ecosystem services in collaboration with project leads, policy experts, and government counterparts in several African countries. With these engagements, she produces knowledge, tools, and builds capacity for integrated landscape- and watershed management to enhance the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of Bank investments in infrastructure, agriculture, environment, and development and to enhance countries' resilience to climate change.
Adrian holds a Ph.D. in Aquatic Resources from Texas State University-San Marcos, where she developed decision support tools for development and conservation planning in Texas (USA), and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona.
Job Titles:
- Chief Strategy Officer, Lead Scientist
Anne (she/her) works to magnify NatCap's impact and ensure that we are achieving our strategic goals. She oversees our communications, capacity-building, and convenings. Anne spearheads our Sustainable Livable Cities efforts and co-leads NatCap's marine and coastal work. She is fascinated by the relationship between people and nature and believes that cutting-edge science, engagement with leaders of all sorts, software tools, art, poetry, and more can be used to understand and enrich that relationship. Before working for NatCap, she was a National Research Council fellow at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. She received her PhD in Zoology from Oregon State University, her MS in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine, and her BA in English and Environmental Studies from Yale University.
Becky Chaplin-Kramer holds joint appointments at Stanford University and the University of Minnesota through her work at the Natural Capital Project, where she leads development of global modeling of ecosystem services. She is also co-founder and Executive Director of the tech non-profit Spring (springinnovate.org), which builds software solutions for environmental research and problem solving. She is a Coordinating Lead Author on the Values Assessment for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and serves on the Task Force on Knowledge and Data for IPBES, the Ecosystem Services Working Group for the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO-BON), and the Expert Working Group Consulting on NASA Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Programs. She earned her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate at the St
Ben Janke is a research associate at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, working with the Natural Capital Project at the Institute on the Environment. His research as part of the Minnesota team and of the Sustainable Cities initiative has focused primarily on development and application of new models for InVEST, specifically for hydrologic ecosystem services (stormwater retention and flood mitigation) of urban watersheds. Ben's research interests broadly include many aspects of urban eco-hydrology, with a focus on management of stormwater-borne pollutants and excess nutrients, and related impacts to water quality of urban lakes and streams for both people and wildlife. His work has often been in collaboration with Minnesota state and local agencies, contributing to field data collection and instrumentation development, as well as synthesis of expansive stormwater data sets. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University, and earned a M.S. (2006) and PhD. (2011) in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota.
Bonnie Keeler is an assistant professor in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) area at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the former Program Director for the Natural Capital Project team at the University of Minnesota. Keeler continues to partner with NatCap on topics related to environmental management, conservation decision-making, and the valuation of water-related ecosystem services. Current projects include estimating the return on investment in public environmental funding in Minnesota, evaluating the costs and benefits of urban green infrastructure deployment in cities in the United States and globally, and investigating the cultural, social, and relational values of freshwater. Keeler is particularly interested in projects and collaborations that integrate the humanities and the social sciences in ways that elevate environmental justice and equity considerations in ecosystem services research.
Job Titles:
- Coastal Engineering Research Fellow
- Researcher at the University of California - Santa Cruz and With the Nature Conservancy
B.G. Reguero is a researcher at the University of California-Santa Cruz and with The Nature Conservancy. He is a civil engineer with a PhD in sciences and technologies of water and the environment from the University of Cantabria's Environmental Institute of Hydraulics and a Master's in Applied Economics. His research focuses on climate risks, coastal science and policy, the impacts of climate change, ecosystem-based adaptation and risk reduction. He has consulted for different international organizations, including the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank; and in different geographies, where his work has informed policy through science and applied knowledge. His current areas of work, in partnership with the US Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University are: coastal adaptation; disaster risk reduction and risk management in coastal areas; innovative risk financing; the value and use of ecosystems for coastal protection, with a special focus in coral reefs; and the economics associated with climate adaptation.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board
- Director
- Founder
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Chairman of the Board, Founder, Stockholm Resilience Center, and Director, Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- Director of the Beijer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Professor Carl Folke is Director of the Beijer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Founder and Chair of the Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. His research on the resilience of people and nature, show how progress, prosperity and wellbeing will benefit from reconnecting development to the biosphere. Carl has a long record of science, policy, and practice collaboration and is engaged in the arts-science interface. Books include Investing in Natural Capital (1994), Biodiversity Loss (1995), Navigating Social-Ecological Systems (2003), Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship (2009), and Water Resilience for Human Prosperity (2014). Awards include the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco's Grand Medal Albert I in Science, the Gunnerus Sustainability Science Award, and the Planet and Humanity Medal. Carl is elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
Chris Field's research focuses on climate change, ranging from work on improving climate models, to prospects for renewable energy systems, to community organizations that can minimize the risk of a tragedy of the commons. He has been deeply involved with national and international scale efforts to advance science and assessment related to global ecology and climate change. He served as co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2008-2015, where he led the effort on the IPCC Special Report on "Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" (2012) and the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Prior to his appointment as Woods' Perry L. McCarty Director, Field served as director of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, which he founded in 2002. Field's tenure at the Carnegie Institution dates back to 1984. His widely cited work has earned many recognitions, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Research Award, the American Geophysical Union's Roger Revelle Medal and the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Science Communication. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Ecological Society of America. Field holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Harvard College and earned his Ph.D. in biology from Stanford in 1981.
Dave Fisher is a software engineer for the Natural Capital Project. He supports development and maintenance of InVEST and other core software products. Dave previously worked as a data analyst for NatCap and contributed to methods for modeling patterns of recreation and tourism. He holds a M.S. in Geography from the University of Oregon, with specialization in GIS, biogeography, and paleoecology, and a B.A. from the University of Rochester.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Research Assistant
Devan Addison-Turner (he/him) is an African American, first-generation college student at Stanford University. Devan is a PhD student in the Sustainable Design and Construction (SDC)-Sustainable Urban Systems program in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE). He is a recipient of the National GEM Consortium Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Devan is a Graduate Research Assistant for both the Natural Capital Project and Urban Informatics Lab at Stanford. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Prairie View A&M University. He has a diverse background in leadership, community service, and mentoring students in STEM. Devan is working to reduce inequities in health, education, and society through research. He is dedicated to saving lives, preserving Earth's resources, natural habitats, and mitigating environmental impacts on our ecosystem. Devan is creating data-driven models to help inform and guide policy that will sustain community health and well-being for future generations.
Job Titles:
- Senior Engineer
- Software Team Lead
Douglas Denu (he/him) is a senior engineer for the Natural Capital Project's software team, which supports NatCap's mission through ongoing tool maintenance, user support and ensuring a robust and stable software platform for the future of computation in ecosystem services and natural sciences. Doug is a returning member of the NatCap team, having contributed to the development of InVEST, OPAL, and core development libraries before leaving for a graduate degree in computer science. Doug's academic research continued his software for science focus where he worked with state practitioners to develop an approach to identify and prioritize watershed river segments for restoration projects. His academic interests consisted of machine learning, deep learning, and statistical modelling approaches. Doug received his B.S. in Computer Science from St. Lawrence University and his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Vermont.
Job Titles:
- Director of Communications
- Media Inquiries
Elana (she/her) leads internal and external communications to advance NatCap's mission of activating leaders in government, business, NGOs, and the finance sector to adopt and scale-up natural capital approaches. She is passionate about supporting and promoting solutions-oriented research that is co-created with end users, audiences, and communities. Before coming to NatCap, Elana worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)'s Center for Public Engagement with Science & Technology, and with Kearns & West, where she focused on stakeholder engagement and strategic communications for energy and environmental projects. She earned her MA in international environmental policy from Boston University and a BA in international relations from Mount Holyoke College.
Emily is a software developer with the Natural Capital Project at Stanford working on the development and maintenance of the InVEST software platform. She has a B.S. in bioinformatics with a minor in computer science from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she worked as a research assistant with the UCSC Genomics Institute and contributed to geospatial analysis for environmental DNA research.
Job Titles:
- Finance, Grants & Operations Manager
- Urban Program Director, CAS Based NatCap Team Associate Professor
Gail Kaiser manages the Natural Capital Project's finance, grants and operations, combining her Silicon Valley experience as a product manager and consultant for globally dispersed product development and marketing, and volunteer work in local natural resource preservation. She has worked for IBM, Siemens, HP, and is on the board of the Committee for Green Foothills. She received her MBA and BS in Economics from Santa Clara University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Professor
- Professor and Director, Research Center for Eco - Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Professor and Head of Subject in Sustainability Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre
Garry Peterson is professor in environmental sciences with emphasis on resilience and social-ecological systems at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. His research combines three themes: abrupt systemic change, how ecological changes impacts people, and using futures thinking to improve navigating surprising social-ecological change. He is head of subject for the centre's Sustainability Science PhD programme. He is also co-leader of the research stream Resilience for Transformation at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Professor and Science Director, Stockholm Resilience Centre
Henrik Österblom is interested in ocean ecosystems and ways to improve stewardship of marine resources. His ongoing work focuses on the speed and role of science in society, global cooperation and altruism, and understanding cascading industry effects from novel sustainability approaches. Österblom is leading the Keystone Dialogues, a global co-production project including major private actors in global seafood, which has resulted in the establishment of the Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) initiative, aimed to transform global seafood towards more sustainable practices. He is principal investigator in Nereus - Predicting the Future Oceans Program, and member of the IMBER Human Dimension Working Group, the Future Earth Knowledge Action Network and the Seas of Norden Network.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Professor, Research Center for Eco - Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences
His research focuses on the relationships between ecosystem structure-process and ecosystem services, ecosystem service assessment and its policy application. First, he explored how forest ecosystem structure and processes impact ecosystem services through long-term ecological research. Second, he assessed the ecosystem services at different scales (including watershed, regional and national) and applied them into different context of policy assessment and design (e.g., payment for ecosystem service policy, ecological redlining institution, sustainable landuse policy).
Héctor Angarita (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. His research focuses on the linkages between freshwater ecosystems functions and services, climate variability, and production and demand of water-dependent resources-such as energy and biomass. Héctor received his Ph.D. in Environmental and Rural Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia in 2018. In his PhD work, he developed cross-scale methods for characterizing regional interdependencies and cumulative impacts between the production and demand of energy and biomass, and basin-scale processes and services of the freshwater system in Colombia. He holds an M.Sc. in Hydrosystems from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia; and a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow
- Life Science Researcher With the Marine Team
Jade is a life science researcher with the marine team of the Natural Capital Project. Her role bridges the science teams and the training team, with her scientific expertise to support capacity building and tie applications to the resources coming out of the training program. Prior joining NatCap, Jade worked in collaboration with decision makers, local communities, and NGOs in Hawaiʻi, Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands to advance science and co-develop place-based tools that can answer their questions. Her research interests lie in bridging land and sea to support people and nature in a changing world. Jade obtained her bachelor of sciences in geography from the University of Queensland (Australia), a masters in marine biodiversity and conservation from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (University of California San Diego), and a PhD in natural resources and environmental management from the University of Hawaiʻi.
James Douglass is the Software Architect for the Natural Capital Project. His current work focuses on expanding access to InVEST through better tooling in heterogenous compute and development environments, supporting research efforts and identifying and prototyping impactful enhancements and improvements to NatCap's Science and Technology offerings. In previous roles with NatCap, James has led the technical strategy of InVEST, led the development of OPAL, and previously served as lead of the Software Team. James received his B.S in Computer Science from St. Lawrence University.
Jan is a postdoctoral researcher under the Wallenberg Foundation Research Exchange program on Natural Capital, Resilience and Biosphere Stewardship, which is jointly hosted by Stanford University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. His research focuses on integrating scenario planning methods with ecosystem service modelling in a social-ecological context. Previously he contributed to the development of the Global Biodiversity model for policy support (GLOBIO) at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). He earned his PhD at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Wageningen where he studied resilience and regime shifts in aquatic ecosystems. In close collaboration with water quality managers and environmental consultancy companies he developed dynamic modelling tools that can be used to evaluate ecosystem services, quantify resilience and predict the occurrence of regime shifts.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Project Manager With the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University
Jerome Laycock, (he/him) is a Project Manager with the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. He coordinates the activities for a project funded by several Multilateral Development Banks and the Moore foundation aiming to transform policy and investments through mainstreaming rapid approaches for natural capital assessment and accounting (NCAA). He is passionate about supporting and promoting solutions-oriented research that is co-created with end users, audiences, and communities. Jerome has worked for several years for WWF and TRAFFIC, focusing on protected area management in the Mekong Region and Illegal Wildlife Trade in Africa. He studied History at the Free University of Brussels and International Relations at Durham University. His interests include hiking, learning languages, cooking, and meeting new people.
Job Titles:
- Ecosystem Services Analyst
- Services Analyst
Jess Silver is an ecosystem services analyst for the Natural Capital Project's marine team. Jess works closely with NatCap's partners around the world to build capacity for and support the application of scientific approaches and tools, like InVEST, that help people better account for the value of nature in their decision making processes. Jess' focus is on applying and supporting the development of the InVEST coastal protection tools. These tools are designed to assess vulnerability to coastal hazards and the potential for ecosystems to provide natural defenses, and are currently being applied in national development planning, climate adaptation and restoration prioritization contexts. Jess has also been working with partners in British Columbia to develop a habitat suitability index, a simple screening tool to help inform siting and restoration questions in spatial planning efforts. Jess has a master's degree from the University of Washington and bachelors from Wellesley College.
Jesse (he/him) manages data, models terrestrial ecosystem services, communicates results, and trains the user community as a member of the Natural Capital Project's Stanford team. He is an environmental scientist and educator with a passion for supporting conservation projects that maximize ecological, economic, and social benefits and equity. He began his ecology career as a field researcher restoring native amphibian habitat in alpine zones throughout California and has worked on a major marine conservation project in Galapagos, Ecuador. Jesse specialized in Conservation Planning while earning his Master of Environmental Science and Management degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds a B.S. in Environmental Biology from Southern Oregon University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota
- Director, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota
Jessica Hellmann is the director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. As director, she provides overall strategic leadership for the Institute, an internationally recognized organization working to solve grand environmental challenges, while promoting interdisciplinary research, teaching and leadership across the university and engaging external partners and stakeholders. Hellmann's research focuses on global change ecology and climate adaptation. She was among the first to propose and study ways to reduce the impact of climate change through new techniques in conservation management. She works with governments and corporations to build investment in climate change adaptation and co-authored several climate assessment and adaptation planning efforts. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 2015, Hellmann was on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Biological Sciences. Hellmann is a frequent contributor to leading scientific journals such as Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, BioScience and PLOS ONE. She serves on the editorial board of the journal Evolutionary Applications, is an associate editor with both Conservation Biology and Elementa, and serves on committees for the Ecological Society of America, the College Board and the National Academy of Sciences. Hellmann earned her Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University and served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and the University of British Columbia's Centre for Biodiversity Research.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Applied Economics, UMN
- Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota
Justin Andrew Johnson is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota with The Natural Capital Project at The Institute on the Environment. Justin graduated with a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2014. Justin's research explores how ecosystem services affect economic systems, and vice versa. For the Natural Capital Project, Justin is developing InVEST models for non-timber forest products, biodiversity impacts using the GLOBIO framework and methods to optimize management decisions when multiple ecosystem-service matter (and potentially conflict). In addition to ecosystem service valuation, Justin researches food security, climate change and agricultural management in developing countries, along with more traditional topics in economics such as dynamic general equilibrium modeling of economic growth. Justin's work has led him to research areas including China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Brazil. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, he received his B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College.
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- Senior Research Specialist in Data Scienc
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- Director of Science - Software Integration, Lead Scientist
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- Convenings and Training Program Manager
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- Business Administrator
- Executive
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- Executive Director
- Member of the Partnership Committee
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- Collaborative Research Coordinator
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- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Associate Director of Knowledge Initiatives, University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment
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- Director, Information Scienc
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- Program Manager
- Research Associate
Job Titles:
- UMN Program Director, Lead Scientist
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- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Chief Conservation Officer at the World Wildlife Fund - US
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Director, Stanford Woods Institute
- Director, Stanford Woods Institute, Melvin and Joan
Perry L. McCarty Director, Stanford Woods Institute, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor, School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences
Job Titles:
- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Chief Scientist, World Wildlife Fund
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- Member of the Partnership Committee
- Professor of Ecological / Environmental Economics, University of Minnesota
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- Postdoctoral Research Associate, UMN
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- Member of the Partnership Committee