Sara leads the conservation planning program, which brings together the tools, information, and expertise needed to make biodiversity conservation more effective. For the past few years, she has focused on helping state wildlife agencies plan for climate change, and she is also interested in exploring how to apply the principles of conservation planning to landscape-scale conservation efforts.

Before coming to Defenders, Sara worked with programs based at the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment that focused on climate change and variability and wildland fire risk. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia.

Sara holds a BA in anthropology and linguistics from Grinnell College and an MS in natural resource management from the University of Arizona.