Our Team
Paso Pacífico’s early successes are a result of the hard work of its dedicated staff and active board of directors. Together, we are making sacrifices in working towards realizing our dream of creating viable wildlife corridors along the pacific coast.Staff
Executive Director – Sarah Otterstrom, PhD sarah(at)pasopacifico.org  |
Sarah is an ecologist with over 17 years experience in Central America where she has lived and worked as a student, scientist, and leader in biodiversity conservation. After learning first-hand of the unique beauty of tropical dry forests and pacific coast habitats, she became determined to dedicate her life to protecting them. Otterstrom received a Ph.D. in Ecology, in the area of emphasis of Human Ecology, from UC Davis. Her scientific research has focused on the ecological impacts of fires in tropical forests and the cultural practices that influence tropical fire regimes. As a conservation scientist she serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biotropica. She has also served on the Association for Fire Ecology and the Sociedad Mesoamericana para la Biología y Conservación. |
| Liza has been a leading conservationist in Nicaragua for over a decade. As an ecologist trained at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, she has worked in varying capacities for non-governmental organizations, on community-based conservation projects and in leadership positions within the Nicaraguan ministry of the environment. In recent years she was director of the National Protected Areas System, overseeing the management of 76 protected areas and also served as the Director of the Biodiversity Program, an agency charged with evaluating and protecting the nation’s biodiversity. Most recently, González served as a consultant to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor project developing strategies for corridor implementation. |  |
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Julie leads our environmental education program, sharing the wonders of our natural world with children at six different schools across the Paso del Istmo. She studied biology at the Universidad Nacional de Nicaragua in Managua. Since joining Paso Pacifico in 2006, Julie has been instrumental in organizing many community workshops and school events. She especially enjoys helping students to gain hands-on learning in the forests and beaches in their neighborhood. |
| Claudia Nohemy is a forest ecologist who recently graduated from Universidad Nacional Agraria in forestry. Claudia’s college thesis focused on the seasonally dry tropical forest vegetation located at the Escameca Grande Private Reserve located in the Paso del Istmo. Claudia is from the northern Nicaragua province of Matagalpa where she has also carried out forestry management plans in that regions native pine forests. Currently, Claudia works for the Paso Pacifico tending to the hundreds of thousands of trees in the Return to Forest Project. Claudia is passionate about protecting and restoring the native forests of her homeland. |  |
Nicaragua Program Administrator - Ulda Morazan
| Ulda is a professional administrator and joined Paso Pacifico manage our Nicaragua office. Ulda is originally from the northern Nicaraguan province of Esteli, though moved to the capital Managua when she started college. Prior to joining Paso Pacifico, Ulda worked for six years at the General Department of Income (the Nicaraguan IRS) and specialized in financial audits. Since joining Paso Pacifico in January 2008, Morazan is enjoying using her professional skills to contribute towards conservation in the country so loves, Nicaragua. |  |
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Cortney joined Paso Pacifico to manage the Ventura office. She has always had a strong love for animals, and in 2005 graduated from Moorpark College's Exotic Animal Training and Management program. Prior to Paso Pacifico, Cortney worked as an educator at Wildlife Experience, a local non-profit that brings animals to schools and teaches wildlife education courses. With a strong and ever-growing passion for wildlife conservation, she is delighted to be a part of the Paso Pacifico team.
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Conservation Scientist – Martín Lezama, MSc nicapinol2002(at)yahoo.com
| Mart’n is a wildlife biologist with expertise in wetland conservation, parrots, and migratory birds. Mart’n taught ecology at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) for fourteen years. As part of Paso PacificoÕs scientific team, Martin is working to understand the threats and status of the endangered Yellow-naped Parrot in the Paso del Istmo. Recently, Mart’n was an author on the management plan for NicaraguaÕs largest protected area, Reserva Indio Ma’z. He presently serves as the secretary for the Sociedad Mesoamericana para la Biología y Conservación. |  |
Turtle Program Coordinator - Salvador Sanchez
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Associated Scientists and Professionals
Nonprofit Management and Development – Christine Schmidt, MNA christine(at)pasopacifico.org
| Christine has combined her knowledge of non-profit organizations and her passion for wildlife and river conservation to support the creation and development of Paso Pacífico from the start. Christine has a master’s degree in non-profit management from the University of San Francisco. She currently works as a development officer for the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis. However, she makes time during the weekends to contribute to our common dream of building a wildlife corridor. Christine is also a talented nature photographer. |  |
| Wendy Purnell is a PR and fundraising professional with over a decade of experience in publishing, education, and policy. Dedicated to voluntary solutions to environmental issues, she started the Czech Republic's first nationwide environmental education program where she brought interdisciplinary lessons into high school civics and science classes. Wendy enjoys highlighting the achievements of non-governmental organizations, and working with Paso Pacifico combines her passion for individual rights, deep commitment to wildlife conservation, and love of the people and landscape of Central America. |  |
Conservation Scientist – Kim Williams-Guillén, PhD kwilliamsg(at)pasopacifico.org
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Kim is a conservation scientist whose main interests involve the role of agricultural and human-managed lands in tropical mammal conservation. She has been coordinating Paso Pacífico’s primate conservation and applied research efforts. This work focuses on monitoring spider monkey populations in the forest fragments in western Nicaragua and determining priority tropical dry forest areas for restoring their corridors. Kim received her Ph.D. in 2003 from New York University. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan where she works with Dr. Ivette Perfecto on questions of biodiversity and its ecological function in agricultural systems in Central America. |
| Kirsten McGregor is a Marketing Communications & Business Development professional with over 15 years of corporate experience in high-tech, media, law, telecommunications, internet and consumer goods. Over the past decade, she has contributed her knowledge and skills to non-profit organizations in areas that she is passionate about - environmental issues, animal rights, species preservation and neglected & abused children. Kirsten has traveled to Nicaragua and viewed first-hand the positive effect Paso Pacifico is having on the environment through proactive and innovative reforestation projects and in species habitat preservation. She is currently directing Paso PacificoÕs planning and development in Marketing Communications and Public Relations. |  |
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Stephanie Spehar is a primatologist and conservation scientist who received her Ph.D. from New York University in 2006. Her primary interests focus on large-scale ecosystem conservation and the response of “umbrella species” such as primates and other large-bodied wildlife to anthropogenic habitat disturbance, with an eye toward developing effective conservation policy. She is also interested in the ecological role of primates and their effect on overall biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Her dissertation research was conducted with white-bellied spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) in northeastern Ecuador, and she also has experience working on wildlife-related conservation issues in Asia. She visited Nicaragua in January 2007 to assist in sample collection and project planning, and is currently working with Paso Pacífico to develop a project examining the habitat use and behavioral ecology of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) living in forest fragments in southern Nicaragua. |
| Suzanne is a graduate student at the School of Forestry at Northern Arizon University where she is an IGERT Fellow. Her interests focus on the threatened spider monkey and its use of fragmented dry forest habitats. She is working with her dissertation advisers and Paso Pacífico staff to design research that will contribute to our corridor design. She has a masters degree in primatology from CUNY. Suzanne has volunteered for Paso Pacífico over the last year training farmers, making maps, and participating in primate monitoring activities. |  |
Board of Directors
President – Sandra Pearson sandra(a)pasopacifico.org |
Ms. Pearson has expertise in business management and organizational development and currently works as an instructor at three California community colleges. She is an experienced volunteer nonprofit leader, as both a staff member and board volunteer. Her experience as President of the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood-Shasta Diablo is most pertinent to Paso Pacifico. While in this position, she successfully represented the organization to the general public and the media, and participated in successful fundraising programs that resulted in broad public support for the organization. She is fluent in English and has intermediate fluency in Spanish. |
| Ms. Belli is a sociologist trained at the University of California, San Diego, and is presently a leading figure in private lands conservation in Nicaragua. She is owner of the Montibelli Reserva Silvestre Privada (Montibelli Private Natural Reserve), an ecological reserve she created with her own land. She received the Mejor Reserva Silvestre Privada, Nicaragua 2004 (Best Private Natural Reserve in Nicaragua, 2004) from the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute. She is also president of the volunteer Nicaraguan-registered non-profit organization, Red de Reservas SIlvestres Privadas (Association of Private Natural Reserves), a voluntary organization for landowners interested in, or owning, private reserves. The organization seeks to strengthen the private reserve network. She is fluent in English and Spanish. |  |
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Julia Medina received a doctorate from the University of California Davis in Latin American Literature. Recently, Julia joined the faculty at Albion College in the state of Michigan as a scholar in culture and history of Central America. Previously, she worked as a program coordinator for the University's Center for History, Society, and Culture. Julia was born in Nicaragua and immigrated to the United States with her family as an adolescent. Since then, she has maintained her cultural ties with her native country. Her family continues to produce sustainable shade-grown coffee in the mountains of Nicaragua. |
| Rodolfo Dirzo is a conservation scientist with a passion for conserving the tropical forests of Latin America. He is currently Bing Professor in Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. However, Rodolfo taught for many years at the Universidad Nacional Aut—noma de Mexico where he still continues to collaborate. While at the UNAM, he also directed the Los Tuxtlas Tropical Research Station in Southeast Mexico. Rodolfo's scientific interests are focused on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of ecological processes in tropical forests. |  |
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Rick Smith is a former US National Park Service employee. During his 31-year career with the NPS, he served in Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Everglades, Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, the Service’s Washington, DC headquarters, and two of its regional offices, Philadelphia and Santa Fe. His last assignment with the NPS was as the Associate Regional Director for Natural and Cultural Resources in the Park Service’s former Southwest Regional Office, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Prior to joining the NPS, Smith was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the National University in Asunci?n, Paraguay. Since his retirement in 1994, Smith has provided conservation consulting services in Latin America for the World Bank, the Internamerican Development Bank, the US Peace Corps, the United States Information Agency, the United Nations and several private consulting firms. Smith has authored numerous magazine and journal articles on conservation issues in the developing world. He lives in Placitas, New Mexico. |
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George Gorman received a Ph.D in Biology from Harvard University, and later was Professor of Biology at UCLA. His specialty was evolutionary biology and herpetology. His primary research area was in the Caribbean region. At approximately age 40, he left academia and studied law at the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation he was admitted to the California Bar and the federal Patent Bar. After a brief legal career, his “day job” for the last 25 years has been asset management/financial planning. During this period, he found time to spend a year in Costa Rica with Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology; two years at the Yale School of Forestry (partly as a 60 year old grad student, partly as a research associate); and several semesters as a visiting fellow at Cornell University. He has been involved with the management of the endowment funds for the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund for many years. |
