Using Psychology to Solve Environmental Problems, Working Directly with Communities, and Managing Conflict and Tough Conversation with Lauren Watkins

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Lauren Watkins, environmental psychologist, working at the intersection of people and environmental challenges about Using Psychology to Solve Environmental Problems, Working Directly with Communities, and Managing Conflict and Tough Conversation.   Read her full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 
1:55 - EPR is hiring!
5:15 - EPRs New Yearly Goals
9:14 - Interview with Lauren Watkins Starts
19:15 - Opportunities outside Academia
26:12 - Behavior Change Campaign

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Lauren Watkins at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenwatkins/

Guest Bio: 
Currently supporting organizations such as the Jane Goodall Institute, Keeping Forests, Ecochallenge.org, and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, Lauren Watkins brings over a decade of experience in environmental psychology and social science research to inspire sustainable behavior change. 

As Principal Owner of her consultancy, Lauren specializes in co-creating solutions alongside communities, employing empathetic research methods, and crafting tailored communication and change strategies with communities and target audiences - not simply for them. Her work emphasizes ethical and sustainable approaches to addressing environmental challenges, ensuring that initiatives resonate deeply with stakeholders. Passionate about fostering impactful change, Lauren focuses on bridging the gap between people and natural ecosystems to find solutions that match the scale of today's problems.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about our podcast goals for the year. We interview Lauren Watkins about using psychology to solve environmental problems, working directly with communities and managing conflict and tough conversations. And finally, here are some benefits of installing patios, and for those of you that don't know, a patio is a cat patio, we'll talk about it in the interview.

Number 1, the cat population is growing and closing the gap between dogs, so there are more cats out and available, and Sam has 2 of them, but wants another one. Cats are one of the biggest causes of bird deaths in cities. The free roaming cats kill an estimated billion birds in the US every year. That's wild, and many even when fed because they just have that predator instinct and like to catch things that move. And yeah, so that's one, that's another challenge and then patios reduce bird predation by keeping cats from the actual birds. So, there you go, put it all together, there's a reason to get a patio and support for Sam getting another cat. How about that? 

Hit that music. 

From the NAEP website, enthusiastic environmental professionals from across the country gather each year at NAEP's annual conference and training symposium to share the opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with environmental leaders. This year, NAEP is hosting their conference in Anchorage, Alaska from Monday, May 11th to Thursday, May 14th. Register now at www.NAEP.org. Let's get to our segment!

Before we dive into our goals, I wanted to talk about this position we have open. So we're looking for a marketing position. First of all, I want to start with shouting out the team that we currently have because Sam processed this video literally, almost like instantaneously. The patios, the patios, that little uh segment just popped in there on its own somehow, so. Thank you so much, Sam, for being the best editor and also just helping keep us on track. And then, of course, Marley is here, always watching and taking notes, getting speakers this entire last year has been such great interviewees, like our guests have been fantastic. And Kacie, Kacie. is the one we're trying to fill. Kacie's been awesome in keeping up our posts and getting notifications out for this. And we're really, what we wanted to talk about is we've reached amazing goals by the end of this year. We've just posted about reaching the 25% and according to Buzzsprout, top 25% of their podcasts. And of course, Nic. Yeah, we're the top 5% in the, in the world. Isn't that a buzz Sprout right now? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, but it is, it is incredible. It's quite an incredible thing. Top 5%. Top 25%. It's really cool. So we have big goals for this year, and we need a new team member to help us specifically with marketing so we can look for creative ways to just up those numbers and get more listeners and reach more people. And it's a fun team. I don't know, Marley, you want to say anything about your experience being on the team? I can jump in on this. No way. No, I'll jump in off the cuff. It's been an incredible year being able to sit in on these conversations. Obviously, I've, I've renewed, so I'm, there's not an open position to be a producer, just making that point clear. Just a marketing person. 

But the networking aspect as a young professional has been really amazing. I got to meet so many incredible environmental professionals and in that marketing role, you'd get that same kind of opportunity along with getting to know our amazing co-hosts and the rest of the team. So, highly recommend applying if you haven't already. Spread the word. Thanks. And so, yes, join our team. We have fun. It's very flexible and we just need someone on the team to help us get the word out and promote and help coordinate with NAEP to get our posts and stuff out. So, it's, uh, it's great for anyone who has a little bit of experience. You don't have to be super qualified, overqualified to do graphics and things like that. Just, um, a little bit of knowledge on how to do social media and a little bit of just creativity. How, how can we look at our numbers and make them better. And so. Yeah, I don't know if you want to say anything else about that, Nic, before we move on to our goals. I think we've got like, it's a great segue to our goals really, and honestly, if you listen to the show, like one of the things we talk about all the time is Not being afraid to go after something that you're not sure you're 100% qualified for, and I think that's always a joy when going through this process is someone who maybe has some experience and, you know, we're doing an interview with Sonny in a couple of weeks about that specific thing. It's like, hey, I don't have all the experience, but I have enough and I'm confident in what I do and I can come after this. But yeah, yeah, let's talk through goals like, well, first if you do want to submit, just send an email to Laura@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com with your resume and a cover letter why you want to work with us. There we go, perfect. But yeah, I mean like let's talk through goals. I mean, like, you know, there's simple ones, right, where it's like we want to just be a bigger show, we want to be a broader show, we want to get more sponsorships, we want millions of dollars, uh, you know. I'll take a million dollars. You're right, right. Yes, exactly. Yes, I will have one of a millions. Yeah. But you know, I mean. Or somewhere between where we are now and there would be great. More would be great, but it's easy to say, but like, what do we really want to do for the year? I mean, how do you see the year going for us? Oh, I mean, goals, number one is more great guests. 

We've had such awesome people and we; we intentionally try to ensure that not every guest is a famous person, not every guest is like DC high level because there's a large gap between someone just getting started and someone who's very high-level projects and has done so much. Those people are great. We love to have them. They help expand the reach, but we also intentionally try to find some people who like Heidi Pan, who is just getting started, you know, so I want to, like, for a goal is really to, I would like to get some more high-level people but still continue to hold on to that mix. I don't want us to get to be snooty Judys and you know, a little bit above people above people's heads, you know. Yeah, I, I think like for me, it's always like interesting people come from all walks. And I think it's been a really important thing for us and we mean that when we say it and I think if you look at our guest list, it actually shows that specifically we do care about getting people from all walks and I think that's. Always a goal is, you know, find as much representation as we can in as many ways as we can, and I'm always very proud of that. It's such a cool thing that we do. But yeah, I mean, you know, we always do things first and then numbers, yeah, exactly, and there's always opportunity for sponsorship. There's always opportunity to grow on sponsors. That's always a metric we want. It's part of why we want a marketing director. That's one of the things that we think would be, would help us in that regard. And, but I don't know, for me it's what is it, the first question. When we first started this, we would ask like, are we still having fun, right? And we don't even have to ask it anymore because it's just true, and I, I love that it's just, you know, it's just, it is true and like the show still stays fun and that's another goal of mine, just make sure it's still fun, not just for us but for people that are on it, and I think, you know, we have opportunity to do that in many different ways and yeah, that's the joy, that's the joy of the show. Yeah, so, you know, that another goal is really, we want to keep having that diversity in guests, a lot of diversity and backgrounds and experience levels, but also, we want to be able to get to more conferences, do more live events, do more creative things, something a little bit different. If you are someone who puts on a conference or does something. 

Thing, you know, where we could come and do a live episode, that would be something fantastic. We'd like to do this year too. Yeah, and I mean, I guess while we're at it, I want to do more video stuff. I want us to have some element of that in the future as well, and I think that's part of what our new budget for the year includes and, you know, we're working through how that works and what that will look like and yeah. Conferences are great with the every time we go, it's a lot of fun. Every time we go, we get people new to the show, and we get people who have listened to it for a while. I haven't told you this yet, but when I joined Jacob's, I actually had somebody tell me like, oh my gosh, I listened to the show, and I can't believe you're here. They like sent me an IM like, we should catch up. And I thought that was great. So, yeah, the coolest part of the show is that it does have reach and it's really fun to do that, and the more we get out, the more in front of people we get, the better that is. Yeah, awesome. So that's it. I mean, it's kind of simple, but it's just taking what we've already started and in year 5, expanding and growing it even bigger. Yeah, and that's it. That's a great place to wrap. Let's not uh keep talking about ourselves and how great we are. I feel dirty. Yeah, I know, right? Uh, with that though, let's take it to our interview.

Welcome back to EPR!

Today we're joined by Lauren Watkins, an environmental psychologist working at the intersection of people, communities, and environmental challenges. Lauren, it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me. OK, so we have a whole bunch of questions to ask you, but you mentioned something before we even started that I wanted to start with. You went to Jane Goodall's funeral, and I would really love to know what that was like. I did. It was, it was a really a very big honor to be invited. And the coolest thing, if you can say that about a funeral, which I will hear, cause it was really cool, um, they had all of these like service and emotional support dogs there, like, maybe, I don't know, like 50 dogs. It was a lot on the stairs of the National Cathedral as you walk in that we could pet, which was the like most beautiful way to set the tone because Jane really loved dogs. So yeah, that was a really neat part of it. It was, it was a beautiful ceremony. Leonardo DiCaprio gave a great speech, so did her grandkids. So especially Marlon's was a really nice speech. And there was a children's choir. It was just a really beautiful event. That is awesome. I'm really glad you got to do that. So, invitation only, huh? You must be pretty special. I worked with the Jane Goodall Institute for a long time. It was 6 years this January. So yeah, I've been a consultant for them for quite a while. So I'm a little bit in the loop with the team in Tanzania. So it was nice to be included. That's really awesome. Did you get to work in Tanzania with them? Yeah, I've been to Tanzania many times. Oh wow. That's my favorite country in the world hands down to visit. Highly recommend. For sure. OK, so you were doing environmental psychology with them? Yeah, I work on behavior change campaigns or initiatives, and usually the goal is to, you know, help co-create some kind of a solution to an environmental problem. In that case, there's a really high rates of deforestation in Western Tanzania, where Jane actually went to Gombe and started all of her research like that part of Tanzania. And so I was brought in to help think about what kind of solution we could cook up and a really long story short, it ended up being a 5 year campaign to help small scale farmers do composting so they could increase the soil fertility on their own farms because what was happening, the soil was just really tired because people don't.

 Compost there and they can't afford fertilizers. So, they were going to forests and starting new farms where they could get fresh soil. And so, it ended up being a really big composting campaign initiative. We have funding for 5 years, but unfortunately, it was through USAID and that was shut down last year. Right, of course it was. So. So can you speak more before we go too much further about environmental psychology? How did you get into it? And you mentioned the one project, but what other things do people hire you to do? Yeah, so I'll start with how I got, oh, I'll start with what it is, and then how I got into it. What's really funny I was trying to hear my dad explain what I do because it takes me a minute to. It's like, I don't know animals. Yeah. And he's a park ranger. So, he's got some funny stories too. So, I describe environmental psychology is. Exploring the situations that happen when with like human and nature relationships. Sometimes that's wildlife conflicts. Sometimes that's how we use natural resources. Sometimes it's about how to help small forest landowners in the southeastern United States generate income so they don't have to sell their forests to developers. Sometimes I help with communication plans, like with the. Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. And sometimes I help with exhibit design. It's when people are in a natural place or experiencing an issue with natural resources. That's typically the kind of at a very high-level stuff that I consult on. The way I got into it. So, I have a bachelor's degree in psychology from Legler College in St. Augustine, Florida. And I thought I wanted to be a child therapist. And so, I realized pretty quick in some internships that was not for me, love kids, but not for me. And I'm 41, so I graduated during the housing crisis, and there were no jobs for somebody with a psychology bachelor's degree. So I joined AmeriCorps. And so AmeriCorps put me with the Florida Park Service. And that's how I got into the field of environmental everything. And I started out in environmental education, and I was doing sea turtle patrol and. I started, you know, I'm going to be a biologist. This is going to be great. 

Love prescribed burning, like such an adrenaline rush. So, I did that for a minute. And then I decided to get my master's at the University of Illinois in Natural Resource Management. But then my first semester, I took this class called Conservation Psychology. And I was like, oh, wow, this is like both things together. I didn't even know that existed. And that's kind of where it launched off for me for there. So I started specializing in that. And then I had several jobs where I got to practice that and then got my PhD in it at the end. A lot of people who do what I do call themselves conservation psychologists, but I don't, I would identify as environmental psychologists because not everything I do is always conservation related. Right. That makes sense. That's really cool. So, are you going after the work or people coming to you now? Most of my client work is a repeat client that I've worked with for years, but I do occasionally take on new projects if I have the capacity. So, I'm very lucky that way that a lot of the stuff that I work on tends to be very long, because building a relationship with a community, getting to know who they are, understanding the problem, that takes a long time. So usually, my projects are at least 2 years long, sometimes much longer. Yeah, so I get to really know the team and work with them on lots of different things. That's so funny too, like to hear you talk about like your career path, like. I have an undergrad degree in psychology. I came out during a housing crisis. I thought I'd be a wildlife biologist, so I was like, well, I'll just go back to school for biology and then fell into environmental policy of all things. Like it's just. I love how paths take us different ways, even if the starting points really similar. So that's really fascinating. So, like if you're focusing on like the human side of environmental work, I try to, you know, I almost have a joke where it's one of my, my favorite dad jokes is like I'm a, I'm a biologist that knows how to talk to people, right? Like that's those are the degrees I have, right? But in a way that is kind of like it's a really important thing because it is hard to explain sometimes why you want to do something or why you wanna. Like conservation medicine was one of the things that I had in in grad school, for example, and trying to understand like the human element of the environment. So, like for your job, how do you work on solutions?

Like sometimes some solutions are designed without community input and it's really challenging and really difficult. If you're coming into a place where that's the starting point, how do you use those skills you have to get to a resolution that people can be happy with? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's not always easy. It's really hard when there's already been, you know, some damage done because there's been sort of a paternalistic or top-down approach, kind of like what I sometimes call like our classic approaches to conservation decades ago when you people are very focused on saving a species or a place and like kind of screw everybody else. We're just going to focus on that. And that I've started a project of, I won't name names, but one that I worked in, and this happened to also be in Africa. There were some really big conflicts between my client and a national park that was nearby in the community. The community was farming rice in an area that was very unsafe for them because of the local chimpanzee population. And so, they had been at each other's throats for years, and to the point where they had burned each other's, like some of their buildings down and it just gotten way out of control and off the rails. A lot of times I'll come in as like a neutral third party and do conflict resolution. And so, in that situation, my client actually got kidnapped on a motorbike during this like meeting. And this is like the first month that I was on this project because the conflict was just so, so bad, but. And a long story short, about a year, and this is not all because of me. I was just giving advice. He's, I'm just the consultant, but by the end of it, he was, uh, dancing with the community members. We had come up with a solution that worked and smooth things over and, uh, having community celebration. So that took a long time, but the tool we use there was an agreement with called, I call it reciprocal agreement were. 

We listen, let them air all the grievances they have without interrupting, and over a series of a very long time, we come up with, if you'll do this, we'll do this, self-enforcing on their side, um, and honoring those steps and stages, and then having football tournaments, uh, helps too, because everybody loves a good party. So yeah, that's how we smoothed that over, but it took some time. Yeah, it's so challenging, especially people like. When they have different interests, right? They have maybe different goals for what they want and why they want them. It's really hard to get people to sit down and you almost, I don't know if you did this like one on one, you're like, OK, we're gonna talk to them and then we're gonna talk to you and then we'll talk to each other together. Sometimes that helps and sometimes it's, you know, getting the right people in. So, I, I don't know how you navigate this because sometimes people themselves can kind of get in the way of the challenge. It's like, well, I don't like that person. OK, well then maybe we'll talk to someone else who's not that person. Do you have to do those kinds of things? Yeah, sometimes, I mean, in that situation, there weren't, there were only a certain number of people. It's a very like lowly populated area, so we just had to learn to get along with each other and get over the things that they had done to each other in the past. And you know, there's a big sense of community there. So, I don't know that that approach would have worked in the United States. But their people were a lot more forgiving, and we got past it. But yeah, that was definitely one of the more challenging ones that I had to help us navigate. Yeah, it's a very, very interesting. When I think of like environmental psychology, conservation medicine, those kinds of things, like my first thoughts like to academia, like, like, OK, so you're doing research and you're doing it for a university, but it sounds like, you know, you also, I mean that's not at all the case for you. You have genuine client needs and support and talked about USAID providing some of that framework for doing the work, but OK, so you don't have USAID right now. How do you get to work and how do you find new opportunities outside of the academic realm? Yeah, so one thing that's important, I wanted to share that I hadn't mentioned yet is about research. All of my projects do involve research. 

You have to get into a community to collaborate with them. Um, and that's usually funded by a grant. I've worked for US Fish and Wildlife, USDA, EPA, NOAA, you know, all the acronyms in the United States for the most part, that are still around and. Still funding work internationally and in the US. And some of my work comes from foundations that they fund the research and community engagement and like piloting the campaign and launching it. Right now, I have a project that's funded by the EU and a few other private funders working on wealth driven demand for large gaps in the Middle East and a few other countries in Asia. And so, yeah, the funders are always kind of different. Sometimes it's the institution itself, if it's something like an internal communications plan or a sudden like crisis management situation at a zoo, those things don't involve research usually. I've been, I've seen this movie before and I kind of know how to guide them through it, um, but when it comes to getting to know a community, I don't take on a project that they don't have a research budget. But I hate to write. So, I realized real quick that academia was not for me. I, yeah, when I do my results reports, they're always visual dashboard, storytelling, lots of beautiful charts. 

I love graphic design, but it's really hard to get me to sit down and write a really long paper. I hate it. That's too funny. Me too. I'm right there with you. It's like, I'm good at it and I don't like it. And that's a real weird frustration to have. But yeah, very cool. So I'm going to be an adjunct professor this coming semester for the first time I've ever done it, and just to dip my toes in the water. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I love teaching, but I don't want to work anywhere where I have to write a lot of papers. And I'm not going to make the students write either, because I feel like that would be kind of rude to do that to them and not want to do it myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, do as I say not as I do. Yeah. There's writing and there's research. What other skills, if someone is interested in the same intersection of work, like, what skills or even just personality traits would you say someone should need to have to be able to succeed in this type of work? The two things that come to mind for me first is humility, because sometimes it's really hard for me to convince my clients that they're not the right messengers to be like in a community. Telling people what to do or asking for anything. I've got a lot of experience in a lot of different environmental and conservation problems, but I always try to go in with like, acting like just talk to me like, I don't know anything about this and being taking a humble, fresh approach to listening is really important, which is, you know, sometimes hard, but it's very important because every, even if it's the same problem, it's like one that I was dealing with in Florida. Some HOAs that were clogging up the drains, storm water drains situations. I've had this a few times, but there's always a people are so different and weird. There's always a new reason why the same problem is happening. So, you have to be humble and listen. And then the other thing is, you've got to be good at facilitating a meeting. You just really have to. One of the best classes I ever took was facilitation, especially related to conservation problems, because there's nothing worse than like a really well-intentioned gathering that just gets way off the rails and it's painful for everyone to be there. So, learning and taking actual facilitation. Everybody thinks they run a good meeting, not everybody, some people do. But really go and take a course in it because it's fun and it just makes meetings better for everybody involved. 

Yeah, so give us the, the top one or two tips for facilitating a meeting like that. My style might be a little like colorful for folks, but for me, I always try to bring music. When people walk in, I have background music playing. I love playing afrobeats, instrumental afrobeats, because, or like another crowd pleaser is reggae, instrumental reggae. Like everybody loves that. It sets the tone. So I always have music playing when people arrive, and then I like to make sure that, for example, if I'm giving a presentation every 7 minutes, we do something, even if a really quick, like, raise your hand if you agree with this, or, you know, whatever it might be, something so that they're not hearing me for longer than 7 minutes at a time. Break it up. Because restlessness is the death of a meeting. It really is, yeah, yeah, people's minds start to wander, and yeah, those are both really smart, and they're not things that I think when people who aren't advanced facilitators would even think of. So, thank you for sharing those. I'm sure I led a lot of crappy meetings before I took that. Well, it's, it's like you talk about like humble listening is so hard, the more you know. Right, the further along you get in your career, you're like, well, I know how this goes. I've done this a million times. What you're saying, while it sounds great, is not the way it's going to be, but if that's where you're starting, then you're not even, you're not listening. Like you said, you're not doing anything. 

So, yeah, how do you kind of like break that mindset, that expert mind? How do you get yourself to be in that space? I try to make my mouth go slower than my head, that's for sure. I, I speak kind of quickly that I've been told. So that's a, as I've gotten older, I've grown more patient and been better at that, right? But yeah, it's not easy. Especially, you know, what happens a lot. I keep this little chart in my Google Drive of like how, you know, those memes of like how it started, how it's going. And most of the time clients will come and be like, I want these people to stop doing this thing or start doing this thing. And then I'm like, in my head I'm like, no, that's never gonna work. They're not gonna do that. This is not how this is gonna go down. But I just have to, what I try to do is like listen and let them find their own. own aha moment through making them reflect on what they just said and giving them some examples of like, well, when I did this in Georgia, this is kind of what happened. And you know, do you think that this community might react the same way if you try to tell them to do that? And they're like, oh, yeah, that does make sense. So trying to like to get them to have their own aha moment instead of me just trying to shove the aha moment I hope they have down their throat. Um, and then typically by the end of it, the behavior change initiative is totally different, but they have to co-create it with me. So they've been there along the way. For example, I had a project once where people were harming coyotes in a place that they're native to. The community was. And so the thing they wanted the community was the log sightings of coyotes. And I'm like, well, that's not gonna, in my head, I'm like, that's not going to save coyotes because they stopped on the side of the road and put them in a naturalist or something. But I'm like, OK, so through working with the community and brainstorming other alternatives, it ended up being a cat patio, patio campaign, partnered with the Humane Society to keep people's outdoor cats safer because they were baiting in the coyotes because they were letting their cats be free range outside. And so that reduced like coyote conflict by quite a bit in this particular area and people were like really excited about the cat patios. So that's a good example of a plot twist none of us knew or his company, yeah, yeah, and you have no idea. You're like, wait, what? The patios that that's very funny. I love that. 

And yeah, so like some of your work that you've done recently, you, you led a behavior change campaign with the Goodall Jane Goodall Institute that received a gold award, so. Is that you kind of coming together with all of this, this knowledge, this, this experience? What was that campaign focused on? How did your experience with all these projects help you in that space? Yes, we won a gold award for best branding in a campaign, a behavior change campaign from the Social Marketing Association of North America. The campaign was called Tunza Nongo Tunza Familia, which in Kiswahili means care for the soil, care for the family. So that was the composting campaign that we were chatting about earlier, to slow deforestation for small scale farmers. Yeah. And so that was really fun. We worked with uh graphic designers who are Tanzanian, storytellers who were Tanzanian. We worked with a mascot designer, and we had this big tree costume. Yeah, it was just a little bit of everything from branded football jerseys, because we had these big soccer and netball tournaments for people. There were, of course, billboards, stickers. There's a music video that got really stuck in my head for a long time. I finally got. Uh, out of my head. So, I'm not going to tell you what it sounds like or point you to it right now. There were, yeah, there's just a lot that went into that campaign. There were cartoon tutorials because the literacy rates there are fairly low, farming calendars that were rainproof, a little bit of everything. And so that when people saw the call to action of composting in multiple ways across multiple channels. designed for them, whether it was children doing gardening at their school or women, farmers who were the people who do the most work in this particular culture. So yeah, they would know that there was repetition and that it was designed for them because it was placed in places, they helped us pick out with messaging they created. That's really cool. So, I just see myself as a facilitator. That's why the meetings are important to make sure they go well. 

When you first get a gig, we'll say, and you, you show up day one, like, how do you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm here to make you two like each other or have a conversation. Like, what is, I, I'm trying to envision like how you show up on the scene, like, I'm here to help. Yeah. There's a lot of projects that I work on where it is just not feasible to get the client and their target audience. We'll call them their target audience together. Like when I work on wildlife crimes, it's just like not going to happen. So, but sometimes it does. I have had workshops like in Liberia where we brought together bushmeat sellers, ex-bushmeat sellers, because that's illegal in this area with the client, so they would listen to them. But we did a fishbowl exercise where I told the client, you're not going to be allowed to talk. And there's a lot of trust building with them, but I'm like, you have to just listen. Let me guide this conversation, and you just sit back and watch it and let them explain what it's like without any judgment or a lot of, and you'll have time for questions, but at first, let's just see what they have to say. So sometimes that can happen if it's, if we build a lot of trust in stage setting, and sometimes it's not, and I'm just kind of going and meeting with wildlife traffickers on my own. As a third party and paying them for their time because I'm part of the research process sometimes so I can do those things for my client because they would never trust my client and my client could probably not watch their face and their tone and speaking to them either so it's not, they're not always together but usually my process in a nutshell is I require my clients to go through behavior change training with me, even if it's just an hour or a few hours, so we're on the same page that this is not. Enforcement and policy or awareness raising. This is a different approach where we're going to get to know people and try to come up with strategies to address barriers. Then we go from there with designing or better understanding what problems happening and then starting to bring in community members or the target audience to make sure we made our assumptions are correct and then start data collection. It's awesome. It sounds like really important and impactful work, like you get to see the results. A lot of people are not as satisfied in their environmental work if they're doing a lot of paperwork, writing, and they don't like it, and then they're just feeling disengaged from the outcome. So, it seems like what you're doing is pretty rewarding, even if sometimes it takes years to get to that end point. 

When you are doing this work, what are some of the things that like, If I'm a permitter, this is something that, that I used to see a lot, like, I'm just trying to execute this permit, and I have to go talk to the client. They don't want me to be here. They don't want to have to do this permit. What are some things that are, are less Tanzania helping communities on a, on a really cool level with Jane Goodall, that someone can just take back to their day-to-day type of work and incorporate into like having a better relationship with the person that has to sign a paper or something. Yeah, that's such a tricky one because that's when we're blending like enforcement and policy with behavior change, right? So, if the goal is to, I mean, they're gonna have to sign the permit anyway, so you, you technically have the leverage there if there's something you have that they want, not necessarily the other way around. Usually my, my clients are in the opposite situation where the people are doing something they want, they want them to stop. But I think that one thing that I see happens a lot, so getting away from African examples and we'll get back to like the United States, particularly in, so I worked on this project in California. There's a lot of human wildlife conflict with people and seals on the beaches there, and they are not allowed to interact with seals, and they're taking selfies with them and they're riding them and like doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And in that situation, it's easy to be, and one of the things we discovered was that Fisher people were shooting them. And what I try to have my clients think about, and I would say like if you're sitting behind the permitting desk and you're, I know this is going to be hard because I've worked in customer service. I sold cell phones for 5 years before I got in all this just to like to try to be as like patient as you can and think, I always think to myself like. Every behavior has a reason. 

And this has nothing to do with me. So, what is it that is driving them to be so frustrated? What is it that like, what is going on for them? And then trying to keep an eye on that prize and figure that out, because maybe it has nothing to do with the permit. Something bad happened that day and just by asking them how, you know, they're OK, that can have that humility mindset and see what's wrong, see what's going on. And then that bridges you a little closer to getting that. Action that you want to happen out of somebody. And then a more systemic level, maybe it's time to sit down with leadership or whoever and think about every time somebody comes in to sign this permit, it's a pain for somebody involved. So, let's map out that journey of when someone triggers the need for a permit. So, when they come in to sign it, literally map it out on the wall, get your craft supplies out. People tend to have more fun with it when you bring out arts and craft supplies. And then map it out and look at where the friction points are and think about what you can do about that for people because maybe the information on the website's really unclear. Maybe the building sucks for some reason they can't get in, you know, maybe there's something that's a little death by 1000 paper cuts. So that's something that you can do in any situation where there's conflict like that and just try to be humble that maybe you're not doing something right, maybe it's not them. Yeah, totally. I always say there's a death by 1000 paper cuts, but then there's success by 1000 little improvements like, oh, I like that you can flip it around and just say, OK, what little tiny things can we for to get there. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's like, speaking of phrases, it's one of my favorites is like. If you meet one jerk during the day, that's a jerk. If everyone's a jerk, you're the jerk, you know, and that's kind of like what you have to understand. It's like, if everyone's upset with you for something, then you're doing something wrong. It's, it's not them. Yeah, I like that one.

I'm gonna put those in my back pocket. Those are good. I, I try to tell all my clients because they're often trying to do everything and like you cannot be everything to everybody all the time. So you also have to go easy on yourself, that these are big problems to solve that take a long time. Yeah, for sure. So we have a segment on the show called #t Feel notes. It's a part of the show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments doing the work in the field. These are funny, scary or awkward moments, sometimes altogether. And you've, you've been a park ranger and you're doing all of this work around the world, you must have some stories. So, you had to pick one. What comes to mind for your field note story? I was thinking about that this morning when I was walking my dog, because there's been so many crazy things that have happened when, especially being a park ranger. Yeah, it's so hard to even, even pick one. I think a couple that I mentioned when I was just submitting some answers were finding a weather balloon on the turtle patrol one day and thinking it was a bomb, making a huge deal. I'm on the radio. Oh my God, there's a bomb on the beach. Let's call it in. People start running and then somebody is like. I was very young, way more experienced than me is like, that's a weather balloon. And that was the like, really dumb moment I ever felt. Like, and so we walk over and I picked it up and it's like, it literally said, I am not a bomb. Don't worry. I am just a weather balloon. I may wash up. And I was, but it had wires that it looked crazy. I was like, you know, you never know what can wash up in Florida on the beach. I've seen all kinds of neat stuff. That was one where I just felt really stupid. However, though, that is, I love that. That's exactly the type of story that we want to share because we're like trying to talk to like, people who are listening to hear what kind of jobs they could get, whatever, like, you're going to do something like that. Every one of us has that. I felt so stupid today. 

This type of story. Yeah, that was one. I mean, I've put my working across cultures in the United States and abroad, like I put my foot in my mouth all the time, but that one was just a very obvious. So many people came running to help me out. That's great. So outside of like your professional work, we'd love to ask people like what their hobbies are too, in a, in a way like we all have similar interests in the environment, but we also have such different interests outside of that. So it's like you like to make miniature scale models of nature scenes, uh, which is still I guess environmental adjacent, but is that your main hobby, the main thing you like to do in your free time? Yeah, well, I played volleyball. I have since I was a kid, so I still do that. But yeah, during COVID, you know, I was like looking for stuff to do inside, I started, somebody gave me a tiny greenhouse kit. And I was like, wow, I really like tiny things and putting it together. And it kind of went from there. I try not to keep too many in my house, but yeah, somebody will send me a photo of something that happened outside. I'm working on one for my friend whose mom is a surfer and she's retiring. She owns a surfing company. So, I have a picture of her at the beach and I'm making a tiny scale model of her. You're surfing a wave inside of a bottle. So, and then I give them away because I like to make them, but I don't, yeah, I don't want to be foreseen as like this like crazy old lady with a room and a house full of tiny things. And they'll call you like the bottle lady or something. Yeah, I don't want that. Nobody wants that. But yeah, yeah, I'm working on a redwood, a scale model of the redwoods for us too, and I'm learning to do lighting with fireflies, like asynchronous tiny lighting. So, wow, that's my nerdy hobby, yeah. All right, yeah, you need to send us pictures. That's all I'm saying. I need to know how detailed are we getting here? I'm like scared how good it's going to be. That's the, that's the worry. I'll send a few when they're done. Yeah, yeah. It's awesome. Well, we're running out of time. Is there anything else that you want to talk about that we did not touch on? Join the field of environmental psychology. There's not a lot of us, so we need way more social scientists. 

So this is your official recruit call for recruiting. If anyone's interested in this field, I do a lot of mentoring calls because environmental psych is a relatively new field and social science being integrated into environmental problems is kind of newer compared to how we think about it in like public health or, you know, other things. So, if anybody ever wants to chat about how. I get in the field; I keep a Google Doc with free training ideas and organizations that you can look at and follow. I'm happy to share that if anyone wants to reach out. That's really awesome. Very helpful. It really is. And I'm going to add myself to that list, just so you know. So there we go. I'll email you all the Google Doc and a couple of pictures of some tiny things. Very, very cool. So those people who are listening who are like, yeah, that's me. I want to do it. Where do they get in touch with you? So you can use the contact form on my website, which is Lauren@drlaurenwatkins.com, or find me on LinkedIn, either one is great. My email is really long, so you can just use one of those. It'll be easier. I hear it. Awesome. Well, this was really fun and interesting. So, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It was fun. It's nice to have a few laughs because it's Friday, and I enjoyed listening to the podcast. So thanks for including me in an episode. Oh, thanks. Awesome. Thank you. And that's our show. Thank you, Lauren, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you everybody. Bye!