ERIC MADER, the Xerces Society’s Assistant Pollinator Program Director, works to raise awareness of native pollinator conservation techniques among growers and government agencies. His previous work includes the management of a public arboretum, commercial beekeeping, and crop consulting for the native seed industry. Eric has degrees in Japanese language and horticulture, and is an assistant extension professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota.
MATTHEW SHEPHERD has been with the Xerces Society since 1999. He has worked with a wide range of people to promote pollinator conservation in diverse landscapes, and is an author of the Pollinator Conservation Handbook and numerous other publications and articles. Prior to joining the Society, he established a successful community-based conservation program and helped create the award-winning Samphire Hoe nature park in Britain (Matthew is British by birth). He also spent two years in Kenya, working with communities and government agencies to improve the management of the ArabukoSokoke Forest.
MACE VAUGHAN, Pollinator Program Director for the Xerces Society, earned his master’s degrees in entomology and education from Cornell University. He has studied ground beetles in riparian forests of Utah and the behavior of honey bees in upstate New York, has wrangled insects for two PBS nature documentaries, and has taught a wide range of audiences across the United States about bees, spiders, and butterflies. Mace has led Xerces’ Pollinator Conservation Program since 2003 and also serves as a joint Pollinator Conservation Specialist for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
SCOTT HOFFMAN BLACK, the Xerces Society’s Executive Director, has degrees in ecology, plant science, and entomology from Colorado State University. As a researcher, conservationist, and teacher, he has worked with small issues groups and large coalitions advocating science-based conservation. Scott has authored many scientific and popular publications and his work has been featured in newspaper articles, on radio and television, and in two books by the National Geographic Society.
GRETCHEN LEBUHN is a professor of biology at San Francisco State University. As an evolutionary ecologist, Gretchen is interested in the ecology, population biology, evolution, and conservation of plant populations. The broad focus of her research addresses the relationships between environmental and genetic variation, natural selection and fitness, with specific interest in gene flow, adaptation, speciation, demography, and plant-animal interactions. She works on a diversity of projects from field and greenhouse studies of how different ecological factors influence selection to studies of methods in conservation biology. In 2008 Gretchen launched the Great Sunflower Project as a way to gather information about our urban, suburban, and rural bee populations. The project enlists people from across the United States and Canada to plant sunflowers and observe bee visitation, recording the types and numbers of bees present in their area.