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SFS alumni are involved in diverse, meaningful, and inspiring careers, and are making a difference in communities around the country and around the world! Check out these profiles to see what some of our alumni are up to!
NEW FEATURED ALUMNI PROFILES
Eleanor Mayer - Australia Spring '01
Eleanor is Program Associate for Wicker Park Bucktown, an organization focused on creating, maintaining, and managing attractive and competitive commercial districts for two unique Chicago neighborhoods.
"At SFS, I felt plugged into the environment that I was in, rather than being a tourist. As a planner, you want to be really plugged into the environment where you work."
 Emily Maleki - Kenya Summer '99
After nearly five years at NBC, most recently as associate producer of the Today Show, Emily is transitioning to documentary film production.
"My experience at SFS allowed me to foster the gutsy side of myself -- the side that loves to explore, to meet new people, and to learn. This translated into confidence and, more importantly, a new angle for viewing the world."
Laura Bergner - Australia Fall '07
Laura has been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to conduct research on "the world’s most intriguing bat species through the lenses of ecology, education, and conservation." Over the course of the next year, she will be traveling to Costa Rica, China, Thailand, Philippines, Madagascar, and Fiji to learn about the common dislike of bats by human communities despite their important ecological function as pollinators, pest control, and seed dispersers.
Sharon Deem - Kenya Summer '85
Sharon is a veterinary epidemiologist based in the Galapagos.
"Every day is different in my job. I often travel the islands of the Galapagos to conduct field studies, and during these trips I am 'on call' 24 hours a day for many days at a time. These trips differ from living and working on a boat while studying Galapagos penguins, camping on land while studying the health of passerines prior to a re-introduction program, or visiting chicken farms to determine diseases that domestic birds may carry and directly or indirectly expose to wild birds."
 Kristen P. Patterson - Palau Spring '95
Kristen is program officer for The Nature Conservancy’s new Africa program.
"Get significant field-based experience overseas early on in your career if you are interested in the international conservation or development field, and return to the field every few years. Your decisions are then based on actual on-the-ground experiences, which provide you with more credibility."
 Darren Aronofsky - Kenya Summer '85; Alaska Summer '86
Darren Aronofsky, director of the highly touted new film The Wrestler, remembers vividly the first time he saw a glacier. "I never knew ice could be blue." It was 1986, and he was a high schooler fresh from the pizza parlors and handball courts of urban Brooklyn, studying harbor seals in Alaska with SFS.
Jaime Palter - Costa Rica Fall '98
Jaime is a climate science postdoctoral teaching and research fellow at Princeton University. She recently traveled back to SFS in Costa Rica.
"After meeting this summer’s crop of students and the talented new faculty, we began to suspect that my classmates, while forever special to me, are probably not unusual. The Center remains a place where students can recognize their potential for learning under the influence of a transformative program."
Rob Holmes - Kenya Fall '90
Meet Rob, founder and president of Green Living Project, who travels the world documenting successful and unique sustainability projects.
"SFS laid the foundation for building my key passions: conservation, media, and international travel. I was a self-taught photographer in Africa learning about wildlife management. And now, these passions are the heart of Green Living Project."
 Miwa Tamanaha - Mexico Fall '99
Meet Miwa, executive director of KAHEA, a grassroots non-profit conservation organization in Hawai'i.
"Like the ecosystems we seek to protect, the human interactions around ecosystems (between managers, users, politicians, and individual citizens) are incredibly complex. Success in conservation and resource management requires a deep respect and understanding of both the natural and human environment in which we work."
 Ethan Zohn - TCI Spring '95
Since winning one million dollars on Survivor: Africa, Ethan has co-founded a non-profit HIV/AIDS awareness organization called Grassroot Soccer.
"Taking on such an ambitious project [Grassroot Soccer] and transforming it from an idea to reality is a long and difficult process. We were just three guys with no experience, but we knew we had a good concept. So, we wrote the curriculum and ran a seven-month pilot program. Afterwards, we re-evaluated the plan."
 Hadas Kushnir - Kenya Spring '00
Based on her research conducted over the past four years, Hadas Kushnir, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, is preparing recommendations to keep villagers in Tanzania safe from lion attacks. Her work was featured on a recent episode of Wild on the National Geographic Channel. Click on the link above to read more about Hadas or click here to see a You Tube clip of her interview on Wild.
 Doug Fudge - Gulf of Maine Summer '87
Doug Fudge is an assistant professor in the integrative biology department at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
"I was on night watch and was down below recording data in the log book when I heard an unfamiliar, low creaking noise. When I told our professor, Steve Schwartz, he immediately sprang into action, grabbed his hydrophone, and started lowering it into the water. The strange noises we were hearing were fragments of songs sung by humpback whales."
 Florence Reed - Australia Fall '87
Florence is the founder and president of Sustainable Harvest International, an organization that helps farming families in Central America increase production through sustainable agricultural methods.
"I left SFS with a desire to protect what was left of the world’s tropical forests and a much deeper appreciation of the interconnectedness of life…of all the flora and fauna."
 Sarah Jovan - Canada Spring '98
Sarah, alumna from the Canada program, is a researcher who studies how lichen communities respond to air pollution and climate change.
"My advice is: learn good field skills early. Make time to go outside often for the rest of your employed life. It's a critical part of your continuing education. You can't be a desk-bound ecologist."
 Kristen B. Gorman - Australia Fall '94
Meet Kristen, an alumna from the Australia Fall '94 program and read about her experience conducting research on pygoscelis penguins and climate warming at the Palmer Station in Antarctica.
"To become a research scientist you must have an incredible work ethic, perseverance, and very importantly, find a graduate mentor who is a leader in the field who will develop and challenge your thinking and writing."
You can see more alumni profiles here.
We are looking for additional alumni to profile. If you would like to share your experience or would like to recommend another alumnus/a for a profile, please contact the Alumni Relations Coordinator at alumni@fieldstudies.org.
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