Barbara Dugelby is a conservation and human ecologist with an MS in natural resource economics and policy and a PhD in tropical and human ecology from Duke University. She has over 30 years of experience working in the US and abroad on multi-stakeholder, science-based conservation planning initiatives, with a special focus on collaborative planning and management involving local communities. Much of her work has focused on assisting indigenous and traditional communities in understanding, assessing, and protecting biological diversity and wild natural areas.

Upon completing her PhD, working with Michael Soulé and John Terborgh, Barbara served as The Nature Conservancy’s first Human Ecologist, directing the Local People’s Program and guiding the Conservancy’s work with local and indigenous communities in 60 protected area sites throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. She was the first Ecologist for The Wildlands Project and worked for ten years with Round River Conservation Studies, where she established and directed their Latin America Program. From 2013 to 2016, she directed the Organization for Tropical Studies’ Native American and Pacific Islander Research Experience Program. She currently serves as the Director of Wild Basin Creative Research Center and is a Faculty Associate at St. Edward’s University.

Dr. Dugelby has lived and worked in over twenty countries in North America and South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe, is fluent in Spanish and proficient in German. She currently lives in central Texas with her husband and two children.