Mar Espinosa, MA

Mar Espinosa, an Ecuadorian biologist with a master’s in conservation leadership from the University of Cambridge and a masters in ecology and evolution from Stony Brook University, focused her early career on studying animal behavior and color evolution. Currently, she is a conservation and justice fellow of the American Bird Conservancy. In this role, she supports capacity building for social and environmental justice using participatory and collaborative methods, working with local stakeholders to address their needs through nature-based interventions. Her interdisciplinary approach integrates ecology, social justice, gender, and education. She has co-developed teaching materials for violence eradication in the Galapagos Islands, facilitated conservation agreements with communities in Colombia to support peace through nature tourism, and researched the integration of sexual and reproductive rights in conservation projects to achieve gender equality. She is an active member of Ecuador’s Critical Geography Collective and Chalwayaku, an intentional community in the high Amazon.

Education

• MPhil, Conservation Leadership, University of Cambridge
• MA, Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University