Tim directs a number of Defenders’ conservation policy programs, including Habitat and Highways, Conservation Planning, Federal Lands, Oregon Biodiversity Partnership and Economics. He oversees approximately 20 policy experts, scientists, and lawyers dedicated to conserving a network of wildlife habitat supporting viable wildlife populations across America. He is an expert in biodiversity conservation, private land incentives, agriculture policy, the Endangered Species Act and land conservation.

Before joining Defenders of Wildlife, Tim was Director of Wildlife & Habitat Conservation for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation where he helped build or create new grant-making programs in the Sierra Nevada (California), sky islands of Arizona and New Mexico, northern Rockies (Montana and Idaho), Prairie Coteau (South Dakota and Minnesota) and early successional habitat (Maine and New Hampshire).  From 2002 to 2007 Tim served as Senior Ecologist for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC where he played a lead role in private land-based conservation work, and endangered species policy and helped lead a lobbying campaign on the 2008 Farm Bill.  From 2001 to 2002 he worked for the State of Hawaii, raising money for endangered species conservation on private lands and implementing new state policies for wildlife conservation by non-government landowners.

Tim graduated with a B.S. degree and double major in Biology and Environmental Studies from Yale University in 1992.  He earned a PhD in Conservation Biology from the University of Hawaii.  He has been both a Fulbright Fellow (Australia, 1998) and German Marshall Fund Fellow (2010).