Our People

Dr. Lizzie McLeod

Global Reef Systems Lead

Arlington, VA

Headshot of Lizzie McLeod.

Lizzie Mcleod Global Reef Systems Lead © Courtesy Lizzie Mcleod

AREA OF EXPERTISE

Coral Reefs, MPAs, Restoration, Marine Spatial Planning, Blue Carbon, Climate Change, Gender Equity

MEDIA CONTACT

Rachel Winters
ph. +1 267-210-2189
Email:

Biography

Dr. Lizzie Mcleod leads TNC's global reef work, including coral and shellfish reefs. She is passionate about supporting local leadership to achieve global impact. She has spent two decades developing and implementing strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and coastal communities and developing tools to improve reef management. She was instrumental in developing TNC’s Reef Resilience toolkit and trainings, which have trained more than 36,000 reef managers reaching over 85% of the world’s reef nations on the best practices for addressing threats to coral reefs. She has led collaborative research with more than 25 of the world’s top marine research institutions and has published extensively on climate change, marine protected areas, conservation planning, reef resilience, ocean acidification, blue carbon, gender equity and more.

In her prior role, she served as a Climate Scientist for the Pacific Division and the Science Lead for the Reef Resilience Network, which provides the latest scientific guidance and resources to help reef managers around the world address threats to coral reefs.

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