About Jon Fisher
Which category below best describes the type of organisation you currently work for/or run?
Areas of expertise
Would you be willing to be approached and share your lessons learned in your area(s) of expertise with our community?
Influencer Of
Popular Content
The Pew Charitable Trusts' International #Fisheries team is looking for someone to help with indicators of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (#IUU) fishing! Interested? DM https://twitter.com/DawnBC012 with an email address to send along more info.
Recent Conversations
Senior Officer, Conservation and Financial Planning, Enduring Earth Initiative
I wanted to draw your attention to what is a pretty cool opportunity to apply expertise in both conservation planning and financial modeling to make conservation more durable. The team this job is on is part of an initiative between Pew, TNC, WWF, and Zomalab to avoid the challenges of “paper parks” by ensuring that conservation management is properly resourced and durable. They are hoping to get someone strong on both the conservation planning side as well as the financial side if possible. They need a minimum of 10 years applicable experience and at least a bachelor’s degree in conservation, finance, or management, and there’s a lot of information in the job description (including that it’s based in Washington, DC, which is not flexible).
https://pewtrusts.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/TrustsExternal/job/Washington-DC-901-E/Senior-Officer--Conservation-and-Financial-Planning--Global-Project-Finance-for-Permanence-Initiative_R001068
I’m not part of the hiring process and don’t have a ton of unique insight into the position, but let me know if you have questions the job description doesn’t answer.
Jon
Forest Natural Climate Solutions Analyst (The Nature Conservancy)
The Global Climate Science Team at the Nature Conservancy is accepting applications for a Forest NCS Analyst. The position is posted oncareers.nature.org (Job ID# 49681). The Forest NCS Analyst will increase capacity on the team as part of the Climate Smart Forestry and Reforestation Pathways of the Bezos Earth Fund NCS project. They will play a critical role in analyzing geospatial and tabular data for these projects. They’ll be involved in all aspects of that research, from planning and designing projects through publication and dissemination of research, but their primary tasks will be “turning the crank” on complex, multiscale geospatial and statistical analyses. The ideal candidate is a committed, detailed-oriented analyst, able to work independently, but excited to collaborate with a wide array of scientists and practitioners.
Recent Comments
I really love this line "Spend less time getting papers into a prestigious journal and more time on communicating the results and impacts to your target audiences". I think this is what I have been hung up on and struggle to see my research as 'valid' because it is still unpublished but working with citizen science projects that do amazing work and education without publications reasures me that successful communication is at the heart of great science and impact.
Definitely - if people dismiss you because your research isn't in the right place, or you don't have the right degree, they're probably not the right partner. There are certainly some decision-makers who are only going to trust peer-reviewed publications for some things (which probably makes sense), but many more that don't. And if you have research currently unpublished but in the pipeline for a journal, I've become a big fan of pre-prints as a way to share early.
Great interview! I've never paid to volunteer, but have done a lot of no-pay and very low pay labor, but also managed volunteers and junior staff. I can say that at least some environmental NGOS are ending unpaid internships given the equity concern (only people with parental support can afford to take them). It's hard to find the right approach with volunteers and very junior staff sometimes. Unless they are either doing unskilled labor or comfortable trying things and working fairly independently, it can sometimes take more time to train them than they save by doing the work. That's no excuse for expecting people to do what should be paid work for free though! I would just encourage people with no experience looking to build it to be open to both 1) experimenting and learning on the job as opposed to being given a lot of guidance up front (it is uncomfortable but helps you learn better) and 2) potentially staying in an entry level position or even volunteer role for a year or two (this will help your supervisor see that it's worth spending their time to invest in you). I've had some 'volunteers' openly say that they wanted me to provide (free) training to them for a few months after which they would move on, which is not very appealing! Best of luck to all.
I'm wondering how large animals can simultaneously increase sequestration (stimulating more vegetative growth through fertilization and grazing) but also reduce vegetative cover enough to increase albedo by exposing soil. It seems like those two responses to large animals would tend to pull in opposite directions. Is the idea that they are heavily grazing some areas to the ground, temporarily increasing albedo, followed by increasing sequestration (w/o lowering albedo relative to less grazed areas)?
I forgot to mention that I have a handful of resources on this topic at http://impactblog.sciencejon.com/ - they include a 2 page science brief, a couple of other interviews, video recordings of talks on the subject, etc.
A few colleagues and I compiled our lessons learned and recommendations for improving the impact of research and put it in an easy to read journal article at http://impact.sciencejon.com/
We also have a few shorter pieces to accompany the article, including videos, a science brief, and some interviews at http://sciencejon.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-scientists-can-improve-their-impact.html
Whatever you prefer is fine.
A few colleagues and I compiled our lessons learned and recommendations for improving the impact of research and put it in an easy to read journal article at http://impact.sciencejon.com/
We also have a few shorter pieces to accompany the article, including videos, a science brief, and some interviews at http://sciencejon.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-scientists-can-improve-their-impact.html