Sheila Walsh Reddy
Senior Director, Conservation Impact
Durham, North Carolina
Sheila Reddy Senior Director, Conservation Impact © Megan Peterson 2021
AREA OF EXPERTISE
Ecology, Economics, Sustainability
Biography
Dr. Sheila Reddy is the Senior Director of Conservation Impact at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). She leads TNC’s approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning, with the goal of reducing risk, improving management, and scaling impact in conservation.
Sheila forms strategic partnerships to overcome barriers to measuring conservation impact at the right cost, scale, and level of certainty throughout the life-cycle of conservation projects and programs. Current partnerships leverage a range of agile, science-based, and technology-enabled approaches—e.g., experiments/quasi-experiments, deep learning, remote sensing—to assess impacts on ecosystems, water quality, agricultural practices, and human well-being.
Sheila’s previous collaborative work in conservation science, applied economics, and corporate sustainability has received awards for innovation, academic and social impact. She serves as an Associate Editor for the journal, Conservation Science and Practice.
Sheila previously served as Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives and as a Senior Scientist and Strategy Advisor at TNC. Before joining TNC in 2011, Sheila was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University in Economics and Ecology. She earned her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography through a program with the Department of Economics, University of California-San Diego. She has B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University.
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In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journals (see Publications tab), Sheila has written numerous essays and her collaborative research has been covered by various media outlets (see selection below).
- CBEAR Fellows Seminar 2021: How to Apply a Fail Fast Approach to Conservation Strategy Development
- Boston University PLACES Seminar 2021: Evaluating the impact of TNC investments
- SCB Emerging Issues Seminar 2020: Conservation behavior and effects of economic and environmental message frames
- A New Journal for Conservation Science & Practice, Cool Green Science, September 6, 2018
- Bringing Behavioral Insights into Conservation Programs and Policies, Cool Green Science, January 6, 2017
- When Can Sustainability Drive Business Growth?, Cool Green Science, July 21, 2016
- State of the Art of Ecosystem Service Science, 3rd Biennial Water Funds Summit, Bogota, Colombia
- Local Fishing Groups Hold the Tools for Sustainable Fishing, but Need the Strength of Property Rights, Cool Green Science, April 27, 2016
- Film, Five Questions We Should Be Asking About Human Behavior and Nature, YouTube, March 28, 2016
- Film, Working with Nature to Protect Against Erosion, YouTube and Cool Green Science, December, 2015
- Why Do Coastal Communities Invest in Nature? It's Not Science., Cool Green Science, December 16, 2015
- Book Review, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Science Chronicles, December 2015
- What's the Value of Nature?, Huffington Post, by Glenn Prickett. November 5, 2015
- #BusinessCase: Dow, TNC Study Highlights Power of Green Infrastructure in Natural Disaster Protection, Sustainable Brands, October 23, 2015
- How Dow Protects Its Business Assets Using Nature, Environmental Leader, October 22, 2015
- #BusinessCase: Dow/TNC Study Highlights Benefits of Valuing Ecosystem Services, Sustainable Brands, by Caitlin Kauffman. May 5, 2015
- Is Nature Ready to Transform Big Business?, Cool Green Science, April 10, 2015
- Understanding Dow's Nature Goal, nature.org, April 2015
- Book Review, A Better World, Inc., Science Chronicles, June 2014
- Behavioral Science and Natural Infrastructure, Science Chronicles, January 2014
- A Voice for Sustainability: The People Behind Your T-Shirt, Cool Green Science, December 11, 2013
- Re-Branding Nature: From Dismal Swamp to Constructed Wetland, Cool Green Science, December 2, 2013
- Quick Study: Why conservation science needs to get interdisciplinary—and why it hasn’t, Cool Green Science, by Jonathan Adams. September 11, 2013
- Quick Study: When can eating more fish actually benefit fish populations and fishermen?, Cool Green Science, by Darci Palmquist. July 8th, 2013
- A Green Contagion: What Could Make Investing in Nature Catch On?, Cool Green Science, June 26, 2013
- Science Journey to Loreto, Sustainable Fishing, Part I-III, Conservancy Talk, December 2012
- Webinar on Ecosystem Services, Yale Center for Business and the Environment, May 2, 2012
- Valuing Nature, The Science of The Dow Collaboration, Science Chronicles, May 2012
- Fat Fish, Sick Fishery?, Cool Green Science, March 2012
- Paying for Nature: Dow’s Environmental Bottom Line, Time Magazine, January 30, 2012
- Bringing Efficient and Effective Ecosystem Markets to Scale, Part II, Science Chronicles, November & December 2011
- Bringing Efficient and Effective Ecosystem Markets to Scale. Part I,Science Chronicles, November & December 2011
- Q&A on Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and the Dow Collaboration, Science Chronicles, June 2011, conservationgateway.org
- Nature: A Major Company Puts a Value on the Environment, Time Magazine, by Bryan Walsh. January 24, 2011
- Reef Conservation Strategy Backfires, NPR
Sheila has over 30 publications with more than 3,200 citations from collaborative research related to conservation practices, programs and policy design and evaluation, which draws on her expertise in ecology, economics and sustainability.
Visit Sheila's Google Scholar Profile for a full list of publications.