Amanda is an environmental anthropologist and assistant professor at Texas A&M University. For the past 16 years, she has taught, studied, and written about ecotourism and community-based conservation in the Amazon. In one of her favorite projects, the “Amazon Ecotourism Exchange,” she facilitated a series of workshops among indigenous leaders from Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia to discuss ecotourism impacts. That project was sponsored by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (a consortium of Conservation International, the MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank, and the Global Environmental Facility), but her research has also been supported by the National Science Foundation, the InterAmerican Foundation, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Amanda holds a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, a master’s degree in Latin American Studies, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Before moving to Texas in 2003, she was a Lang Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. There she taught courses in anthropology, led students on field seminars to the Amazon and Costa Rica, and directed Stanford’s “Summer Discovery Institute for Environmental Studies” for high school students.
Most of all, she’s passionate about wildlife and focuses much of her energy on seeing, understanding, photographing, and trying to build better stewardship for wildlife. Her family includes her dog, Matilda, and two very special Siamese cats, Athena and Pandora.