Environmental education is at the core of everything we do, and our three main pillars of work are forest landscape restoration, birds and gender.

And speaking of education, I’m back in (online) class!

Thanks to one of the former owners of Finca Cántaros, Harry Hull, I learned about Yale University’s Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative’s (ELTI) Tropical Forest Landscapes online certificate program.

That’s a mouthful, but the point is this: I applied and was accepted to the 2024-2025 cohort of this program. 

When I moved to Costa Rica in 2019, I jumped full-on into forest landscape restoration projects within the first few months of living here without having any prior formal experience. So I like to joke that I was schooled in the non-university department of on-the-ground-fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants.

This really is a joke, because despite my environmental education background (rather than restoration ecology, forestry, or something similar), I was definitely not going about the work without a strategic plan in mind nor flying by the seat of my pants. I was fortunate to have many amazing mentors and collaborators, including Gail Hull, the former owner of Finca Cántaros. 

The Yale ELTI program struck me as a fantastic opportunity to acquire some formal training in forest restoration, and to reflect on FCEA’s work thus far within an academic structure, with the guidance of professionals and peers from all over the world who bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

My goal is to soak up all the knowledge, expertise and information I can so as to develop new strategies for up-levelling FCEA’s future reach and impact.