Our People

Raised with a canoe paddle in hand, Jen transformed her early love of the outdoors into a B.Sc. in Biology and Wildlife Ecology from UW Stevens Point (’10). She brings to ARC fourteen years of ornithological field experience gleaned from a variety of projects in nine US states. While Jen’s early career focused largely on raptors, four years investigating the breeding ecology of the mysterious Marbled Murrelet ignited a budding passion for seabirds. Guiding for Oregon Pelagic Tours helped seal the deal: after a striking chance encounter with a Hawaiian Petrel, she followed these magnificent birds across the Pacific.

Jen is a dedicated birder who co-authors the quarterly Hawaii Region reports for the American Birding Association’s North American Birds publication. She also enjoys gardening, playing guitar/ piano/ ukulele, and learning everything she can from her hula ‘ohana.

Karim attended Stony Brook University and received a B.A. in Ecosystems and Human Impact while studying and exploring New York’s coastline. As a Doris Duke Conservation Scholars, Karim is committed to making conservation more accessible for all.

Before joining ARC, Karim worked in neglected wetlands in Utah and found his passion for species conservation and habitat restoration. Now working with endangered seabirds on Kaua’i, Karim has happily returned to his coastal roots both educationally and in upbringing.

Bobby has always been extremely passionate about working to conserve endangered species and thus graduated from the University of Maine with a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology in the fall of 2019. He has worked extensively with mammals, amphibians and reptiles; but has a soft spot for seabirds since monitoring tern and puffin colonies in his home state of Maine in 2018.

Before joining ARC in early 2021, Bobby was a seasonal technician with Save Our Shearwaters on Kaua’i where he was introduced to native Hawaiian birds through a rehabilitation setting. Bobby is thrilled to be at ARC working with Hawaiian endangered seabirds as he progresses his career in marine ornithology.

Joey brings an extremely diverse skill set to ARC. For ten years Joey worked as a professional artist, multi-media designer, and web developer before being introduced to the world of conservation biology. He has over ten years of wildlife field research and management experience working with a diverse array of wildlife species including endangered forest birds of the Hawaiian Islands, Northern Spotted Owl, Black-backed Woodpecker, New World Warblers, Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Canada Goose, Pheasant species, and a variety of small mammals.

Joey is an active member of the Wild Lens Collective – a non-profit artist collective focused on the intersection of creative storytelling and environmental conservation. He has co-directed and edited several short films such as Aikhag – A Personal Journey, A New Message for Smokey, and Souls of the Vermilion Sea: Searching for the Vaquita.

Lindsey graduated from Whitman College with a B.S. in biology and has since lived/worked all over the west coast from guiding in the Alaska wilderness to studying frogs in California.  Lindsey has made herself a sort of environmental jack-of-all-trades and has experience in hydrology, fisheries, wildlife biology, forestry, and fire management.   

This is Lindsey’s second year working for ARC.  As an IMMP technician last year she got to see firsthand some of the dangers that the seabirds of Kauai face and gained a huge appreciation for the community that is trying to protect them.  She is very excited to continue working and learning about these endangered species.

Tlell researched the beautiful Oregon Spotted Frog while in high school. For her senior year of high school, she received a full scholarship from the Department of State to be an exchange student in Turkey. She graduated with a B.S. in Biology in 2020 from Portland State University.

Before coming to Kaua’i, she worked in Washington hunting invasive bullfrogs. She enjoys reading, hiking, baking pies, and painting.

Adrian is a passionate birder and naturalist determined to dedicate his life and career to conservation. Though interested in nature and wildlife since a young age, his interest in ecology and conservation began to skyrocket when he began visiting NYC’s Central Park in search of birds and other native wildlife while he was in high school.

Adrian graduated with a B.S. in Biology from Binghamton University in 2020. Since then, he has volunteered with the US Fish & Wildlife Service in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge working on a long-term tundra nesting birds study out of a remote field camp, volunteered with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game banding dabbling ducks at a waterfowl refuge in Fairbanks, and worked as a lift operator at Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado. He is ecstatic to have the opportunity to work on applied conservation of endangered seabirds with ARC’s IMMP on Kauai.

Kaitlyn started her career with a BS in zoology from Washington State University. She then went on to get her MS in marine biology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, studying genetic differences in pacific corallimorphs. In between, she held a random assortment of wildlife biology jobs: translocating endangered pygmy rabbits in the Columbia Basin sagebrush, studying octopus stress as a response to warming waters, and roaming Mauna Kea in search of invasive species. Her favorite however was six months on Kuahelani, or Midway atoll, living among the albatross with barely any cell reception.

When not working, you can find her surfing, reading, diving, sailing, or experimenting with an extremely complicated recipe way past normal eating hours.

Emmylou is an early-career marine ornithologist and science communicator dedicated to seabird research and management. She received her B.S. in Integrative Biology from Christopher Newport University in the spring of 2021, where she conducted a research project investigating the efficacy of thermal imaging technology for surveying seabird colonies in the Gulf of Alaska. As part of her undergraduate experience, she studied abroad in the Galapagos Islands, where an albatross encounter kindled her passion for ocean birds.

Emmylou most recently worked as an outreach assistant for the Audubon Seabird Institute’s “Project Puffin” in Maine and with Normandeau Associates as an environmental consultant on a project assessing seabird interactions with pelagic wind turbines in Virginia. She is currently writing a book about storm-petrel science and the folklore surrounding these species in different parts of the world!

Hannah is impassioned by the natural world and doing research to conserve our valuable flora and fauna. Their passion for research started during their time at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Delaware Area Career Center’s Zoo School program. Since then, Hannah has published a couple of research papers on the subjects of hummingbird physiology and shorebird ecology. They have spent the last five years in Northern California where they graduated with honors from Calpoly Humboldt with a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Conservation and Management.

They believe there is a great connection between the health of our wildlife and the health of our people. Hannah is beyond excited to work with ARC on their Infrastructure Monitoring and Minimization Project which directly ties the impacts of human-made infrastructure with the native seabirds of Kauai. They are living their dreams utilizing their skill set to give back to these vulnerable communities. When Hannah is not working they enjoy hiking with their dog, Taz, and making vegan baked goods.

Trysen, a multimedia artist, joins ARC with Kaua’i’s Rise to Work program, and spent three months with ARC painting larger-than-life murals of our native waterbirds and seabirds as part of the ‘Cat Safe, Wildlife Safe Kaua’i Project’. The project uses street art to introduce Kaua‘i residents to the endangered birds that live here. 

You can see more of Trysen’s work here.