Our People

Susan Cook-Patton

Director of NCS Science and Strategy Integration

Maryland

Candid portrait of Susan Cook-Patton.

Susan Cook-Patton Susan Cook-Patton is Senior Forest Restoration Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. © Peter Ellis

Areas of Expertise

Reforestation, Forest Restoration, Natural Climate Solutions, Carbon Accounting, Ecosystem Function

Biography

Dr. Susan Cook-Patton is the Director of Science and Strategy Integration on The Nature Conservancy’s Global Natural Climate Solutions team. Her work focuses on quantifying the climate mitigation potential of reforestation, agroforestry and other natural climate solutions and helping to infuse the best-available science into land management decisions. This involves deep collaboration with many experts across the globe, from academic, government and other non-governmental organizations.

Her work can be found in leading journals, such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, Science Advances and Global Change Biology. But you can also find her science in LinkedIn posts, videos for grade school classrooms, public lectures, illustrated books for children, popular science novels and news stories from major outlets such as National Public Radio, the BBC and The Guardian.

In her previous role, Susan was the Global Reforestation Lead. Before joining The Nature Conservancy in 2016, she was a policy fellow at the U.S. Forest Service and a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. Susan holds a PhD in community ecology from Cornell University and bachelor’s degrees in biology, psychology and English from Indiana University.

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