2019
Phoebe is a biodiversity conservation biologist, global change ecologist, and sustainability strategist—as well as a University of Washington professor, author, and public policy influencer. She has always had very wide interests in changing the world for the better. For the past thirty-six years, she has channeled her research on biodiversity and climate change science into global public policy, planning, education, and team-building. Her work has taken her to Africa, Europe, and recently back to North America. Her studies earned her a PhD in animal ecology, but she found the ivory tower very limiting and felt lucky to embrace a career with one foot in academia, and the other in government and international public policy. She founded and spearheaded the Namibian National Biodiversity Program, as well as its National Climate Change Program, running the first from 1994-2003. But Namibian policies didn’t always have the science to back them up, and Phoebe knew that an arid country needed evidence-based decision making to ensure its environmental health. She joined the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) from 2003-2016, first as chief science and technology coordinator for the Global Invasive Species Program, then as SANBI’s principal and lead scientist for climate change and biodiversity futures. She is now chief science and policy officer at the Conservation Biology Institute, an affiliate full professor at the University of Washington, and research associate of the University of Cape Town’s Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology and its African Climate and Development Initiative. Born in 1961 to a loving, homemaker mother who deferred to her husband, Phoebe “inherited a lot of that quiet diplomacy,” but argues that today’s urgent issues require strong and collaborative leadership, and women have the pivotal role to play. She participated in the 2016 inaugural Homeward Bound Antarctica Leadership Expedition, a course for female leaders in science to further their effectiveness and visibility. “Women can change the world,” she says, “and we are compelling voices for change, for compassion, consensus, environmental and social justice.” One thing unifies her work: helping create a society and economy “where people and the planet actually matter”.
