Sophie leads the Climate Program’s science team in The Nature Conservancy’s California Chapter. Her research priorities are guided by an overarching question: in the face of climate change, how can we conserve, restore, and leverage California’s biodiversity to address societal goals such as clean energy development, food production, disaster resilience, and sustainable communities? Her work is focused on generating the relationships, evidence, and communications necessary to integrate conservation priorities into both on-the-ground projects and land use and climate policies.

Prior to joining the Conservancy in 2008, Sophie was a postdoctoral scholar studying soil ecology. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studied nitrogen cycling in California grasslands. One of Sophie’s long-term career goals is to better integrate the fields of soil science and ecosystem ecology into conservation practice.