SFBBO Staff
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Yiwei Wang, Ph.D., is the executive director at SFBBO. She grew up in the South Bay and has called the Bay area her home for most of her life. She attended Cornell University and double majored in Biology and Psychology. Returning to the west coast, she worked for a variety of organizations that focused on birds and mammals, including an internship with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory and a season as a field technician in SFBBO's Snowy Plover Program. She then attended UC Santa Cruz and received her PhD in Environmental Studies. Her dissertation focused on learning how human development impacts mountain lions and their relationships with other smaller carnivores. After completing her Ph.D., she worked in northern Kenya to coordinate research efforts among four NGOs to study regional human development and wildlife movement as part of a project supported by the Nature Conservancy. Most recently she was a post-doctoral scholar in Santa Barbara, where she worked to increase and facilitate the management and sharing of ecological data.
Contact:ywang@sfbbo.org
Contact:ywang@sfbbo.org
Kristin Butler, M.S., is the outreach and communications Director at SFBBO. She has a B.A. in Political Science from Whitman College and an M.S. in Mass Communications from San Jose State University with a concentration in print journalism. Her master's thesis focused on the application and use of the Internet as a communications tool. After college and during graduate school, Kristin interned as a writer for California State Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin's office and taught at the California School for the Blind and Sylvan Learning Center. Since then, Kristin has managed and directed communications programs for several conservation and youth serving organizations, including the East Bay Regional Park District, Girls Inc., and Earthjustice. She was also a reporter for her hometown daily newspaper, The Argus. She covered every beat, including the environment, and wrote about endangered species, habitat loss, wetlands regulation, and other Bay Area issues. In addition, her work has appeared in Bay Area BusinessWoman News, Tideline, All Bird Bulletin, and Birdwatching Magazine, and on national blogs including SciStarter, P.L.O.S. CitizenSci, and Discover's Citizen Science Salon.
Contact: kbutler@sfbbo.org
Contact: kbutler@sfbbo.org
Ben Pearl, M.S., is the plover and tern program director at SFBBO. Ben grew up in San Luis Obispo, where he attained an early love for nature exploring the nearby tide pools and oak forests. He completed his B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U.C. Santa Cruz, and first came to SFBBO while beginning his Masters at San Jose State University. For his Master’s thesis, he examined how various factors affect plover foraging habitat selection during the winter in the South San Francisco Bay. His favorite part of field work is seeing plover and tern chicks hatch and grow to become adults, especially when they are banded and he can keep track of them over the years. He also enjoys sharing his knowledge of these special birds through guided bird walks and public presentations.
Contact: bpearl@sfbbo.org
Contact: bpearl@sfbbo.org
Max Tarjan, Ph.D., is the waterbird program director at SFBBO. Max received her B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and then came to the West Coast to pursue her interest in behavioral ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For her Master’s and Ph.D., she researched space use and reproductive success of male sea otters in Monterey Bay, CA. Max is interested in animal space use and uses spatial statistics and programming to track bird populations and inform management of wildlife in the Bay Area. She enjoys education and outreach, and is an instructor for the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators.
Contact: mtarjan@sfbbo.org
Contact: mtarjan@sfbbo.org
Cole Jower is the habitats program manager at SFBBO. A Bay Area native, his love of nature began early when he used to explore the East Bay hills for lizards and snakes. Cole graduated from Humboldt State University in 2014 with a B.S. in Wildlife Conservation and has had the opportunity to study cloud forest birds in Ecuador, and nesting sea turtles in Costa Rica. He has an M.S. degree in Biology at San Jose State University where he examined patterns of habitat use by breeding Rhinoceros Auklets on the Farallones. Before advancing to the role of habitats manager, Cole worked as an ecologist and biologist for SFBBO in our habitat, waterbird, and plover and tern programs.
Contact: cjower@sfbbo.org
Contact: cjower@sfbbo.org
Dan Wenny, Ph.D., is the landbird lead biologist at SFBBO. He completed a B.A. in Biology at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where he participated in research in Kenya and Costa Rica. For his M.A. at University of Missouri-Columbia he studied the effects of forest fragmentation on forest interior birds, and for his Ph.D. at the University of Florida he studied seed dispersal by birds and subsequent tree seedling survival in the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Following that, Dan studied grassland birds and prairie restoration in northwestern Illinois and taught various biology courses at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. After moving to California in 2014, he started researching bird use of high elevation meadows in the central Sierra Nevada. He is also interested in urban ecology, plant-animal interactions, and ecosystem services and recently co-edited a book including these topics, Why Birds Matter: Avian Ecological Functions and Ecosystem Services.
Contact: dwenny@sfbbo.org
Contact: dwenny@sfbbo.org
Katie LaBarbera, Ph.D., is a senior biologist at SFBBO. After developing a fondness for urban birds while growing up in Chicago, she fell in love with ornithology in college while studying the adventurous love lives of house wrens. She received a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University, then a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, studying life history variation in dark-eyed juncos in the Sierra Nevada mountains. After her Ph.D. she taught at UC Berkeley, then detoured to beautiful Minnesota to study tree frog communication. She has volunteered as a math tutor at San Quentin Prison and as a raptor handler/mammal medicator/laundry doer/dishwasher at the Lindsay Wildlife Hospital. She is interested in animal behavior, conservation, and everything birdy.
Contact: klabarbera@sfbbo.org
Contact: klabarbera@sfbbo.org
Gabbie Burns is a lead biologist at SFBBO. Gabbie earned a B.S. in Computer Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, but along the way discovered that her true interest was wildlife conservation. She is currently working toward an M.A. degree in Biology through the Advanced Inquiry Program offered jointly by Miami University and the San Diego Zoo Global. Her focus there is on direct human threats to urban wildlife.
Contact: gburns@sfbbo.org
Contact: gburns@sfbbo.org
Alex Rinkert is a senior biologist at SFBBO. He has been studying birds in central coastal California for more than ten years. While studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U.C. Santa Cruz, he developed an interest in natural history, and now pursues dragonflies and small mammals as avidly as he does birds. He regularly leads land and seabirding trips around the region and directs the Santa Cruz County Breeding Bird Atlas II.
Contact: arinkert@sfbbo.org
Contact: arinkert@sfbbo.org
Alvaro Jaramillo, M.S., is an affiliated senior biologist with SFBBO. Alvaro has a B.S. in Zoology and an M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Toronto, and also conducted research at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. An expert on the birds of California and North America, he wrote the American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of California and New World Blackbirds. He is also an authority on the birds of Chile, authoring Birds of Chile (2003), collaborating on Chile’s Important Bird Areas program, and helping to identify a new bird species there, Oceanites pincoyae (Pincoya Storm-Petrel). An author and contributor to numerous field guides and popular publications, Alvaro’s passion is not only to understand the biology and natural history of birds, but to enrich other’s enjoyment of birds and further avian conservation and he leads birding trips throughout the world with his company, Alvaro's Adventures. He is also a recipient of the Eisenmann Medal of the Linnean Society of New York, which honors people who excel in ornithology and encourage the amateur.
Contact: ajaramillo@sfbbo.org
Contact: ajaramillo@sfbbo.org
Sirena Lao is the Environmental Education and Outreach Specialist at SFBBO. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Natural Resource Ecology & Management from Oklahoma State University, where she studied bird collisions with buildings in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has previously worked as a laboratory manager at UCLA, assisting with avian genomics research, and as a program assistant for Travis Audubon Society in Austin, Texas, coordinating outreach and events.
Contact: slao@sfbbo.org
Contact: slao@sfbbo.org
Jessica González is a biologist at SFBBO. She received a B.S. degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Restoration and Resource Management at San Jose State University and had the opportunity to work as a Snowy Plover intern with SFBBO. She is currently pursuing an M.S degree in Environmental Studies at San Jose State University where she will examine how predation affects breeding Western Snowy Plovers within the salt pond habitat in the Bay Area and also works as a wildlife biologist with a small Bay Area consulting firm.
Anqi Chen is a biologist at SFBBO. She received a B.S. degree in Environmental Science and Terrestrial Resource Management at the University of Washington. During her coursework, she was involved in a project to study the foraging behavior of Great Blue Herons and also completed a senior thesis on window-strike mortality of birds on her campus. Anqi began working at SFBBO as an intern in our Waterbird Program. She is also an artist and has designed several of SFBBO's California Fall Challenge t-shirts.
Contact: achen@sfbbo.org
Contact: achen@sfbbo.org
Emily Sullivan is a habitats ecologist at SFBBO. In 2017, She earned a B.S. degree in Environmental Studies from San Jose State University. For her senior project, she monitored the effect of salinization on plant species at Inner Bair Island in Redwood City, CA. She has gained experience in the environmental field working as a habitat restoration intern for Grassroots Ecology, a manager for the Center for the Development of Recycling (CDR), and a biological monitor for Olberding Environmental Inc.
Contact: ecech@sfbbo.org
Contact: ecech@sfbbo.org
Matt Hinshaw is a habitats ecologist at SFBBO. He grew up in Del Norte County near the Oregon border where his love for the outdoors grew through swimming in the Smith River and hiking through the redwoods. He graduated from San Jose State University in 2016 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a concentration in Restoration and Resource Management. Throughout his college career he strove to become closer to nature by offering environmental education experiences to kids at outdoor summer camps, as well as volunteering at community gardens and managing the SJSU Campus Community Garden.
Contact: mhinshaw@sfbbo.org
Contact: mhinshaw@sfbbo.org
Kaili Hovind is a habitats ecologist at SFBBO. She received a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a minor in Environmental Restoration from San José State University in 2019. A few months before graduation she began working at SFBBO as a habitats intern, completing her senior capstone project in partnership with the Habitats team by studying the effects of soil type in the germination success and growth of two native Californian plant species.
Contact: khovind@sfbbo.org
Contact: khovind@sfbbo.org
Yeimy Cifuentes is a habitats ecologist at the SFBBO. She studied Biology at the National University of Colombia and obtained a MSc. in Animal Biology from the State University of São Paulo in Brazil. Her research was focused on the taxonomy and systematics of two groups of tarantulas. She has previously worked with the informatics of biological museum collections and the ecology of arthropod communities in the high-Andean ecosystems of Colombia. Most recently she has been a volunteer for the invasive plant management program on the Farallon Islands and also for the science and environmental education programs at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge and the California Academy of Sciences.
Contact: habitats_intern1@sfbbo.org
Contact: habitats_intern1@sfbbo.org
Z Gerber is part of the Accounting/Admin team at SFBBO and is a Bay Area resident of 30 years. She has a background in Wildlife Rehabilitation, with a special focus on raptors and raptor rehab, and is a lifelong conservationist, bird enthusiast, gardener, and avid hiker.
Contact: accounting@sfbbo.org
Contact: accounting@sfbbo.org
Andrea Villanueva is the Colonial Waterbird Intern at SFBBO. She received a B.A. degree in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz. Throughout college, she helped conduct surveys on breeding raptors that reside on campus. Her interest in conservation led her to create her own project that discussed the environmental impact of open-topped pipes on cavity nesting birds. She plans on continuing her work in the environmental field to help bring attention to more conservation issues.
Contact: waterbird_intern1@sfbbo.org
Contact: waterbird_intern1@sfbbo.org
Nani Welsh is a Science Outreach Intern at SFBBO. She is currently an undergraduate student at California State University East Bay studying for her Communication B.A. and Environmental Studies B.A. In the past, she has worked with organizations, such as the California State Parks and the Sierra Club, focusing on programs in environmental interpretation and education. She is looking to finish her degrees, continue a career in environmental communication, education, or policy, and have fun during the process!
Contact: outreach_intern@sfbbo.org
Contact: outreach_intern@sfbbo.org