EPR Live from the ESRI User Conference with Sunny Fleming, Kelly Easterday, and Healy Hamilton

Laura and Nic interview Sunny Fleming, Kelly Easterday, and Healy Hamilton live from the Esri User Conference to explore how GIS, digital twins, biodiversity data, and conservation technology are reshaping the future of environmental work. From building community to using maps as powerful tools for storytelling and action, this episode dives into the people, ideas, and innovations helping conservationists see through the noise and move faster toward impact.

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

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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 Sunny Fleming at https://www.linkedin.com/in/littlemissesri/

Guest Bio:
Sunny Fleming serves as the Director of Conservation Solutions at Esri. Her career has been shaped by a consistent theme of applying GIS to solve real‑world challenges across conservation, environmental regulation, and parks and recreation management. From monitoring species and natural resources in the field to supporting agencies in policy development, asset management, and strategy, GIS has been central to her work at every stage. She has a passion for uniting these interconnected disciplines and advancing their role in conservation efforts around the world, and she is committed to building a global community of GIS practitioners who collaborate, innovate, and support conservation through shared expertise and geospatial insight.

Connect with Kelly Easterday at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-easterday-68a06837/

Guest Bio:
Kelly Easterday is the Director of Conservation Technology at The Nature Conservancy's Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. She has been with The Nature Conservancy for seven years. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Connect with Healy Hamilton at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/healy-hamilton-a1a20942/

Guest Bio:
Healy Hamilton serves as Chief Scientist at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and vice president of the Society for Conservation GIS. She has 25 years of experience as a biodiversity data scientist. Prior to joining SFI, she worked as Chief Scientist at NatureServe for ten years. 

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

Transcript

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us in San Diego. Um, no, this is, we, we, we are really excited to be here. We are doing our very first live show at the user conference, not our first live show, but this is pretty exciting, right?

So we are Environmental Professionals Radio. My name is Nic Frederick and Laura Thorn. Uh, and we've been doing the show for 5 years. We are a top 5% of podcasts in the world, which is crazy in any category, that's where we are, and it's really cool. People listen to it. I love saying that. I have, I have a podcast. Everyone rolls their eyes. No, no, really, I do, I, you know.

So I don't know Laura, why don't you, um, tell everybody what to expect today?

Yeah, so our normal show if you have not listened yet is that we have one guest and we record digitally, so on Zoom for wherever we are or they are, and we normally get to edit. We're gonna do our best to make this alive one and done through and our editor will take a week off and uh yeah, so we're going to do a little banter between Nic and I. That's how the show goes. We talk for a little bit. And then we'll bring on our guests who are patiently waiting right here, right.

So are you ready? All right, well, hello and welcome to Environmental Professionals Radio with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura.

On today's episode, Laura and I are gonna talk about our first time at the ESRI UC. Um, we're also gonna have a great show lined up, uh, today, uh, live, and that'll be really fun as well.

Um, but, and finally, we always add a nice little anecdote to the animals in the area. Uh, there are a lot of listed species to choose from in San Diego County like the Pacific pocket mouse and least bells vireo, which I just like to say. Um, but we're gonna focus with the pocket mouse.

Well, I know, but we're not gonna talk about the pocket mouse. Uh, we are instead gonna focus on the quino checkerpot butterfly. And so that butterfly, uh, when they newly hatch, their caterpillars are a quinoa size. Um, the, uh, they're actually the passenger pigeon of the butterfly world. There used to be billions of them. There are so few now, and I hope we have a better story than we did before. Um, and, um, When the males are looking for a mate, they go to the top of a hill and just wait. Which might be the problem that they have. Um, they're like, hey, we're up here, here, you know, so I don't know, but that's it.

They're waiting for the app. How about that? Yeah. OK, so you ready? Let's do this.

Let's do it. Hit that music.

This is where we usually this is where we normally do really cool music.

So Laura, how has your experience been at the UC?

Well, I've been waiting to get to this thing for 15 years. Yeah, so it's just, you know, a really big bucket list check off for me, for one thing, seeing Jack Dangerman was, uh, something and waiting for for a long, long time. So that was amazing.

I gotta be honest, he even walked out cool. I I was not expecting, so I was like, all right, this is real.

I also don't know when the last or first time I've been in a room of that many people.

Yeah, no kidding, it's pretty crazy, very, very intense. Um, also, I have to give a shout out to the lost and found team. This hat I'm wearing was lost, the hat, folks. I did, and they were very excited to give it back to me. They're like, the loon, loon, you're the loon guy. OK.

I was really excited you got it back too.

Yeah, so it's been pretty fun. We've had a great time. And I don't know, you want to get this interview started.

Well, I did want to note that you are not wearing the same shoes.

Oh, that's true, yeah, I did learn that this is very large and yeah, I've switched shoes. I'm now wearing sneakers. There's a lot, I think there's a lot more casual shoes here.

Yeah, we learned, we learned from our mistakes, yeah.

All right, let's do it.

Let's get to it.

All right, let's get to our interviews. And so today we are welcoming Sunny Fleming, the ESRI director of conservation services here at ESRI. Woo, longtime guest.

Yes, she has been on. I, I don't even know. I've lost track many times. Yeah, I'm a seasoned pro, she's but never in this setting. I know this is a, this is this is different the first, but now they have expectations, so don't mess up, yeah, baselines, shifting baselines. I'm ready for you to keep us rolling in laughter all this whole hour.

Then we have, uh, Healey Hamilton, chief scientist at the Sustainable Sustainable Forestry Initiative and VP of the Society of Conservation GIS, which I heard had a really lovely happy hour last night.

Yes, we did, and it didn't end after we all left that bar.

Living up to its expectations.

And finally, Kelly Easterday, the Nature Conservancy Director of Conservation tech at the Jack and Laura Dangerman Preserve.

And I think everyone is envious of and let's roll into it so we are gonna try to take most of this time to get into the weeds on fun topics and digital twins and techie things, uh, but the show is usually starts off with learning about your career, how you got here, and at the end we talk about.

Things environmental professionals do for fun because that's what connects us all and that's our purpose of our show so people who are getting into the field know that we're people too um I think it's a daunting industry where everyone has degrees and makes cool maps and does all this stuff and you're like I just got here I don't know anything.

Um, but since we want to focus on the digital stuff, we're gonna make this super fast and fun, and we're gonna make it thinly sliced bread sandwich.

He's mad I stole his dad joke.

I love thinly sliced bread.

Exactly. I get so excited when I see it at the grocery store.

Yes, so here's our thinly sliced bread question for you. You, you have 30 seconds. This is a challenge to tell me how you got into this career and to where you are now.

I've always applied GIS to problem solving. I'm a botanist and plant ecologist. Yeah, I am not a GIS person. I would not say I'm entirely self-taught in GIS. I was trained in botany. And I use these tools to catalyze conservation through communication, through storytelling, through telling my leadership, oh my gosh, do you not see what's happening X Y X, Y, and Z, and just being tenacious and always putting myself out there and getting in front of these leaders and telling them the story and visualizing it through maps is how it's opened all these random doors to this very strange pathway to the role I'm, I'm in now at ESR.

Fabulous. I knew you'd be good at that, Healy.

There was never a moment in my life that I was not gonna do everything I could to save nature, but I had no idea what it was going to be until I discovered evolution. So I'm an evolutionary biologist by training and, uh, completely committed to conserving the diversity of life, and spatial analysis and mapmaking is one of the most powerful ways that we can do that.

Awesome, Kelly.

God, everyone's so good at this practice. I did not prepare for 30 seconds, but. Um, my name is Kelly Easterday, and how did I get into this career? I have no idea. I have. How I landed in this chair, it was a very long meandering path. I mentioned to some folks the other day that I grew up playing sports and I was in the water a lot and geography was the last thing I was thinking about, but I sort of, it was the only thing that fit within the time frame that I could actually do academic work and so I took geography classes and I love being outside and how do those two things overlap?

They overlap in what is my position now with the Nature Conservancy. Um, an incredible organization where I get to be outside every single day and be behind the desk every single day, so it's the most amazing thing that I could possibly come up with, um, and I couldn't have dreamed it, right?

These, a lot of our pathways we couldn't have dreamed, yeah, you know, I was, I thought I was going to be an artist and also a professional soccer player, so yeah, I never landed far away from that.

I'm so far away.

Yeah, those are, yeah, quite extreme although there are a lot of works of art here in these maps. I will tell you that that is true so maybe you are right?

So Sunny, let's get some filling in this sandwich. uh, your mapping software has changed so much since the start of all of our careers, your career, and can you just walk us through what's the biggest, most significant change you think over the years scale.

Scale has really changed. When I first started out using GIS, my ability to problem solve was restricted to my desktop and restricted to the power of my little computer that my university had given to me at that point.

And now the ability for us to ask questions not just at scale on a planetary level or even an interplanetary level, if you saw the map of Mars and the. Moon and things like that, but also our ability to now interconnect so many disparate parts of, of data, different kinds of data, um, is getting easier which is allowing us to generate really interesting insights which for people who are in environmental and ecology backgrounds we work with really complex systems and so I think that's very exciting to think about for our future and where our community is gonna take it yeah and so speak more to that we've we've gotten to here which seems.

It's we're in the cloud. That was the big thing before we got in the cloud and now AI is taking us, you know, more and more places. Where are we going?

I don't know. Um, I don't know, and I've had, it's a double-edged sword, and I think our community knows that we had this discussion at Society for Conservation GIS just last week of we have to acknowledge that this is a really powerful tool. These tools are really powerful, but we also have to understand, especially through this lens of environment that we all, uh, know that we have to use these things judiciously.

And um not get too excited and how out ahead of ourselves you know we need to really think about intentionally about how we apply AI to our work and I think one of the most powerful elements of AI is its ability to connect to connect different ways of thinking. Um, Western knowledge and indigenous knowledge in particular is something I'm really excited about geography enabling the connection of on a map because it's so place-based, um, so that's one thing I'm excited about.

Can I add a little bit to that scale answer?

Yeah.

So, another aspect of scale that I have seen shift over my 25+ year career. Is the accessibility of the tools, right? So the scale of the impact that the tools can have has dramatically increased.

But the other thing that's really changed is so many more people have access to these tools in large part because ESRI’s really done a lot to reduce barriers to being able to access, apply and understand geospatial information.

Oh yeah. I ad lib to, um, with scale comes a ton of noise though and like the when you blow up from going from a very small ant to thinking about what's in outer space, the amount of noise and interconnections dramatically increases so I think we have this big responsibility like how do we cut out some of that noise? How do we see through it? What are the pathways that really matter.

Uh, those are things that I think we're confronting with right now. How do we train the next generation to be able to see through the noise, to be able to like find and find those impact pathways that can scale, that can matter, because it is easy to get drowned out in that white noise and drowned out in the cool innovations and drowned out in the terminology and drowned out in everything that comes with it.

Amen sister. Who in this audience feels overwhelmed by the amount of information out there?

I think it's everyone, yeah, for sure, which is actually, it's great because I think the way that we relate to people is through stories, right?

Um, and when, when you talk about like what's changed and the scale, and I'm gonna ask each one of you that, you know, I want you all to answer just like you did, but like I remember for example, trying to do a like a survey of uh whooping crane habitat from, you know, Texas to North Dakota.

And I remember working in GIS. I remember hitting the button and hoping to God my computer wouldn't explode. And it took a month. It took a month for me to get that because it was a million data points. It was like unbelievable. And now that is a breeze, and it's like almost like laughable how hard it was for me. Um, but that was like a moment when I was like, oh, tech has changed. We are in a new space.

So for you. Do you have a moment where something like that happened, where you're working with GIS, you're working with uh your team, and you're blown away by what they're showing you?

Yeah, I definitely have, and, and again going back to last week I, uh, previewed to that community an ArcGIS knowledge graph that one of our new solution engineers put in front of me a couple months ago. She's brand new to ESRI and I love that because they come in fresh and they just come up with these amazing ideas and it was essentially a digital twin of relationships.

Between species and you can explore it in 3D space and then you can simulate, and this is kind of grim, but you can simulate extinction and understand how the different kinds of relationships between these species change because of that.

That to me made this this concept of of system of systems and the idea of a nervous system of the planet very real all of a sudden and I was like, Hannah, I love that you just modeled ecological decay. Do you understand the gravity and the potential of what you've just put in front of this community?

And it's, it's, you know, a very small demo, but to me that was like, oh my God, this, I salivated. I was like this is the dream. I want our community to be able to show this and, and give this as a, as a toy to the world because our world is not a toy, but this digital twin is, and we need to understand how that toy works in a digital space before we screw it up in the real world. Any further, any further.

Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've done nothing wrong. I don't know what you're talking about. What are wildfires going on today? Everyone's out running around in Toronto. No problem, having a great day. But yeah, you know, oh, my moment.

I'm gonna take us back almost 25 years. So primitive in the world of of geospatial technology. So at that time I was starting a new applied research program at a natural history museum and I was surrounded by millions of specimens in the natural history collections, the most verifiable record of life on Earth, and almost so there'd been some effort to digitize, right? So that you can turn the specimen into a digital record.

But there's an extra step that transforms the potential of that information, and it's called georeferencing. So the plant specimen that says in a text string I was collected 2 miles north of the confluence of the Ucayali and the Maranon River in the Peruvian Amazon, turn it into a lap long.

And then, oh, where is it near a protected area? What are the other species around it? Where, what is climate change going to do to it? What are the soils? What you can ask so many questions.

And even now, 25 years later, now there's a huge initiative that Jack and the Natural Museum of Natural History, uh, here, Natural National Museum of Natural History in DC are working on a massive georeferencing effort still so you can turn that record of life alive. Geospatially through the active georeferencing that moment for me changed my life and changed the direction of my lab.

Very amazing. That's so cool, Healy.

Yeah, I have a lot of experience with old maps and I'm like have an old map piece of my heart somewhere that like it just it it exists and I think that's true with like bugs and file drawers like everybody loves that visceral experience of pulling out a file drawer and seeing these amazing creatures from across the universe and then seeing them where they live on the.

Matt, but for me like I, this is a very classic example that I think everyone in our community knows, but Global Forest Watch and Matt Hansen's Matt Hanson University of Maryland's work on like how do you create this like live forest product of where forest is declining and where it's increasing across the world like it's so simple, right?

Where does it increase? Where does it decrease but I think um the storytelling aspect around that is like you just made it a product where kids can Google their home and see right around their house. Is the forest increasing or is it decreasing? Like how do you make a global product like that feel so local?

Well that was such a cool connection for me to make is like let's do that more like let's make these big things really matter to us at home and we're like and make it engaging enough where all our youth can engage with it where anyone that wants to can go to a place that matters to them and see what's happening that actually reminds me of, you know, Nat Geo's mapmaker initiative you know they've been working.

So much on that and getting these tools into, you know, child's hands so that they can explore their world and pull in data sets and empower children to ask questions and it's not just children. I mean, I use Mapmaker myself, you know, yeah, and, and it's fascinating and all the curriculum as well to help educators like build these out because it's not enough to just put a tool in front of people, but that enablement aspect is really critical as well. So what Nat Geo has been doing with Mapmaker has been just, I think, kind of mind blowing.

Yeah, and it's actually a nice segue into like, um, you know, talking about like doing scientific research, right? Uh, and Kelly, for you, like, um, when you talk about that, you talk about using digital systems and, and trying to make something repeatable, but you're trying to do something that's different. There's different like, like even just what you do, um, like you're, you know, the Nature Conservancy has land all over the place and each of those areas has its own uniqueness to it.

So how do you take. Data that you're collecting and apply it locally, even when it's really um it can be pretty different and the outcome could be different.

Yeah. I mean it's definitely a a challenge working across landscapes is a is a huge challenge because we know that context matters and I think that that's where GIS can be so powerful is you're actually bringing the context aware to your location um and you're giving it meaning and you're giving Sunny mentioned earlier knowledge graphs like that's such a cool tool to see how you're starting to make those interconnections but.

Um, I think, you know, I think we're starting to try to figure out how we really condense the essence of collective memory of a place into a system of like how we start to make that system and that collective memory have imagination so we can do like the scenario planning.

Of what what you were talking about Sunny too of like how do we mess up this virtual environment before we even think about touching the real one and that's so like the Nature Conservancy is thinking a lot about translocation and rewilding.

Like we wanna make sure when we're putting an animal back into an environment that we know what's gonna happen. And if you can simulate that. If you can use the collective memory of the ecosystem to know or simulate what might happen and look at those trajectories, like then you start to get to that scaling potential, I think you get to start getting comfortable, get people comfortable for doing that action at a bigger scale, which is that's, that's where the fun happens.

Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, and you know, can you add on to that?

So you've been presenting on Digital Twins and uh for anyone I think a lot of people you probably know, but for our listeners who may not know and a lot of people are just getting into their careers and maybe just starting their GIS journey. So tell us what is digital twins and then give us some highlights from your presentation and you know how are you using it, you know, a little bit more examples like you just gave, yeah, I mean like like AI digital twin is a very hyped term, um, and everyone has different interpretations and I take a shot, yeah, exactly, it's, it is, it's one of those games, um, that you can play all over the conference like none of us would be standing here if we were doing that, Sonny, so careful. You're getting too much SCGIS influence.

Um, but I, yeah, I think it's a digital twin we know is sort of a virtual replica of a system or process like that's the boring blah blah blah definition, but this idea of a sandbox of this collective memory again and this like how do you distill. That how do you play with that? How do you then focus that towards impact?

And that's where the, you know, I was talking about noise earlier like how do you distill the noise like digital twins are only impactful and meaningful if they have a direction, if they have an outcome.

Um, and they aren't just an exploratory venue in which you're trying to, you know, be all things to all people or do all things and smash it into one place.

So I think that there's, um, you know, going into some of the highlights of like what we're doing at the Dangerman Preserve with that. Um, it's really a digital twin is truly just a North Star concept for us.

It's how do we reach beyond what we're currently doing with basic GIS tools, with basic imagery, with basic tech in the field, and push the boundaries and then try to make those come together and those, and I mean by like data and people, um, how do we make the people come together and the digital twin is one of the ways in which we can start to bring.

The community aspect back into that because you have bidirectional feedback loops between what people are creating and how it's influencing the data and the models and the tools and then how that is circulating out into decision making, um, so I think it it is it's the data it's the tools, it's the models, but it's the people and like and it's a North Star so God maybe it is all things to all people.

Well that I think it's interesting because like you know the museum space that Healy was talking about that was our original digital twin but without that geographic context we weren't able to move beyond all these things we're talking about RGS knowledge graphs and digital twins they wouldn't have been possible really if we weren't thinking geographically about, you know, the evolution of the history of how we collect information in the first place and I think that's kind of a brilliant representation, you know, just on stage here that we've we've.

I don't know if we explicitly like put that together, yeah, yeah, you guys planned this out. Yeah, it's so weird.

It's almost like we planned it.

Funny how things just work out like that, uh, and building upon that, so you know you're, you're building these things, but you've touched on it we're not building these things alone, uh, you're not gonna build an entire ecosystem with history which is, you know. The invisible back and forth and then across the globe and then thinking fly this is like you know we're talking 57D here so Healy uh you know you said you don't do GIS but you orchestrate it so there's a lot of hand off you gotta have people involved all the stakeholders what challenges.

are the I mean they used to be I need the file I need it uploaded here I need you to give me the disk um but now what are we talking about when we're building you know a large scale map that's meant for everyone to use and who's handing what off to who and how are we, how do you make this happen?

So I'm gonna answer this from the perspective of certified forestry, sustainable forestry, because in that this is a case where you are, you're focused on geography, right? Forests are managed in parcels forestry companies voluntarily decide that they want to be certified to be sustainable, whether that's sustainable forestry initiative. Or forest stewardship council or there's there's a few certification systems out there and these are people whose job is to grow trees and manage forest ecosystems and in in choosing to be sustainable there's all kinds of requirements around conservation around managing water around managing biodiversity.

And it's not that easy to deliver the data to them that they need to be able to do that successfully and to have the evidence base that it is successful.

And so in my in my day job trying to hand off the information that is necessary to do a good job in conservation in sustainable forestry in a way that people who are not conservationists per se but who are forest managers and that biodiversity data, it's complicated, it's full of gaps it's they need species data, ecosystem data, right? site scale landscape scale.

So this is where ESR tools have been incredibly useful for us, and we've been essentially putting some authoritative data sets. Nature Conservancy data sets, Naserve data sets, the most authoritative biodiversity data sets that are out there, and essentially it's translational like for us we're trying to translate the information in really intuitive ways so our handoff is not complicated. We're using RTS online we're using authoritative data. The handoff is can we translate the information so it's easy and in.

Intuitive and accessible and applicable, lowering the barriers to making forest conservation more sustainable and and maps are so intuitive. I mean, you look at any map and it could be anything we're talking about conservation environment here at this podcast, but any map you can look at and your eye immediately goes to where you grew up or where you live now.

I mean, people's eyes are immediately drawn to that versus I think. I, I read this statistic once that um people process visual information 60,000 times faster than they do when they're reading because when you read you're taking in something linear either left to right or right to left, how whatever language you're reading in visually though, you're conveying multiple concepts at once and people's eyes go to something they immediately know already, so they're already relating to something.

Whereas if you're reading a book, you may not relate to it immediately, maybe you find it later or whatever and so you can risk losing people's attention and that's part of that power of maps and and translation and not just the power of maps, but the power of the digital tools that the ESRI universe has created to allow you to zoom in and out and zoom around and click on and off, right?

That I mean. Are some of our forestry sustainability professionals professionals, they're just like, can you zoom over there? Can you click on that? Can you because they're learning how to use it like and we're doing live GIS with them.

We have Stephanie Skin is in our audience here. She's our SFIGIS person and she's literally responding to people's requests like, can you zoom to Northeastern Oklahoma? Can you turn on the pollinator data set? and you just see their eyes and.

Their face light up and we're really seeing advances now and how especially the new generation of forest sustainability managers want to incorporate this information because the tools are allowing them to see new possibilities.

Yeah, that's, that's so funny. It's I I I don't know why this made me think of it. I remember the first time I saw like a flood map and I was like, OK, where's my house? I need to make sure that I'm not going to be and then I was just like calling my friends, you're in zone A, just letting you know. You're in zone A. Um, they're like, what are you talking about, you know, but I mean, like this is all really great stuff and it's, it's so hard to put this in a, in a, in like a framework.

What should we focus on in the future? That's a mean question. I'm gonna start, uh, I'm gonna ask you, Sonny, but like there's so much that we can focus on, you know, like, like how do we navigate where to start? Are we doing, uh, is there, is there a new thing? Digital twins a newer term. What's our next one? I mean, like, what are we doing?

So we're at an ESI conference, so people are probably expecting to say, well, there's this new tool coming out or blah blah, AI. I think the thing that we need to focus on right now is building community. Human community, um, I think connection with one another and shared knowledge is going to be absolutely critical to being successful, especially within the conservation community.

We need to come together. People are doing really cool innovative stuff in all different kinds of sectors, and we need to be able to share that knowledge and have the bravery to imagine how it can be applied to the work we're doing. And that's gonna require human connection and I'm, I'm, you know, my job here at ESRI is to build community and so that's one thing I'm very passionate about.

It's not some little tool those are always gonna come around and we're always gonna feel like we're drowning in that it's how do we work with one another to solve our very real practical challenges.

Can you expand on the word bravery?

So the bravery of imagination, I think, and Kris Tompkins, if you saw the plenary, so Kris Tompkins did our plenary, and one thing that she expressed to Jack, and she kind of quipped about it, you know, she was like, I maybe understood 30% of what I was seeing on the plenary stage, you know, technical things, and a lot of it was related to like the built environment and you.

Utilities and transportation and energy and all the stuff that may not necessarily be squarely environmental or squarely conservation, but we need to have the bravery of an open mind to watch those kinds of demos and say, well, that may have been related to a transmission line, but how can I apply that to a river? Yeah.

The bravery of imagination to just listen to the innovation that's happening in other sectors and bring it to conservation and pull those people into our world.

I wanted to add on that a little bit, Sunny, because I think um bravery is a huge aspect and I think um. I think we all need to be louder in what we're doing. We've been talking a lot about Healy with your career like taking up space as a woman, like taking up and being loud and being noisy and.

Um, and I think for conservationists in particular we're all scientists at heart like we deal with a lot of uncertainty and we like to spread our science through the world, but we don't like to make big statements about that or, or bang pots about like oh we're innately cautious, we don't wanna overstate our conclusions, but we don't have time to do that anymore.

Time we gotta be loud like I was talking to my colleague Mark and he's been around the Nature Conservancy for a long time and I guess an old motto Hi Mark um has been the Nature Conservancy quietly conserving.

Why? Like and I think we're doing more of that now to like. Let's make a splash like when we find something that's good or when we find something that's bad like let's talk about it loudly so that others can learn more and we can like accelerate this pace because we're moving too slow like Jane Goodall is not here anymore, bless her soul around that that was the last some of the last words she said, right?

Where it's like we are moving too slow we need to move quicker and how do we do that? We, we're loud we draw attention we move the needle.

I don't understand why 200 million people care about Kylie Jenner's newest lipstick shade when like the world's on fire. Yeah, no, so talk about trying to take up space, like telling our story in completely like.

New louder but attractive ways so that we can reach like another couple of zeros on the audiences of people who understand our community who understand the amazing things that this community does and how it relates to them.

There's just this disconnect there's too great of a disconnect of people living their lives and not understanding. That the diversity of life and the health of life on this planet is in fact, that's what they depend on. So, closing the gap of that disconnect, telling our story loudly and brilliantly, as you guys are already doing with the top 5 podcasts. Amazing. So thank you for doing that.

Yeah, it's like, it's almost like there's new media that you could be involved in as well. Um, so if you do want to join the show at some point, I'm just saying we'll be here after. So don't be shy, and that's really, I don't be shy is a great way to say the same thing, right?

I feel like a lot of times it's like, oh well, the data that I have is here and you can read it if you want. Um, so, so it's easy to say that, but how do we actually do it? Like some of it is like doing stuff like this, talking in an open forum. I mean, what else are you seeing in your communities, um, where that is changing?

You know, I've, I've had this debate with some of my friends for a long time. Some of my friends are a lot more like vocal activists. They take an active role and I've been shy to do that, but my skills can be applied in different ways and so my kind of activism has been applied through building community through, uh, using the tools to tell a story, etc. etc.

You know, one thing that really drives me insane on on social media is everyone's telling you what you shouldn't shouldn't say, and if I spent my whole life being worried about a word that I say improperly or whatever, I would drown in the political correctness of it. Everyone has your unique opportunity to express. Yourself for who you are and as a community, we need to have the grace with each other to accept each other's differences and find each other's strengths and build on those and support each other.

My form of activism may not be the same as yours. Right. Everyone needs to really think deeply about who you are, what are you comfortable with, what are your strengths, and how can you apply those to move the needle on the things you can. Care about and that was something another thing that Chris Tompkins said that really resonated with me is that hope has to be earned and I think what she meant was that everyone has the opportunity to apply yourself to your role and to your strengths in the way that you feel is rewarding for you and provides to the broader community we work in environmental and we work in ecosystems we understand the role of diversity.

And we need to apply that metaphor to ourselves and to our community.

It's really well said, dang.

I mean for me my I've I've sort of made a choice about where I want to devote my time to growing community and uh I have had the privilege for over 15 years now to be involved with the Society for Conservation GIS awesome and that is a society that one of its signature programs is to we run an international scholars program that invites applicants from scholars all.

Over the world, usually developing countries, and 15 to 20 of them get 3 to 4 weeks of intensive training in conservation GIS. They go to our annual conference and get to present their projects. They come to this conference. They're, they're here and they get their minds absolutely blown. And they go back to their home countries and they are now like trained conservation GIS professionals they're helping they're working on manatee conservation in the Dominican Republic, jaguar corridors in Ecuador like they're doing such incredible work all over the world.

And then we train some of them to train those in their country. This year we reached over 500 scholars in our history and their trainings have reached over 2000 people in their own countries. Now I know those numbers are relatively small, relative to the scale of our problem, but this is a ripple effect and this is going to continue to grow.

And so it's, I mean, maybe it's a drop in the bucket and maybe it's a tidal wave. I think it's a tidal wave.

Who else in this room right now can say that they've built a program that's done that?

A lot of people have built that program and I've been an honor to be a part of it. Yeah. Yeah it's awesome but join something you know NAAP sponsors this podcast, the National Association of Environmental Professionals, so a multidisciplinary organization for all types of environmental work and having been a member of it since 2011 myself, I've seen so many people get jobs through connections through there. I've seen so many people, right?

See so many people just stay connected in a network when they when they were struggling through work or I've seen permitters and government. Workers in the same room working through projects outside of the office and getting stuff done because they know each other outside of the opposite end of the Zoom call or the phone so joining whether you join SCGIS or you join NAP or you join something else, I think for the community at large for conservation joining something is is finding community is really important I think isolationism in our community right now is is.

Really scary, and I think all of us, you know, working in conservation can be tough. And having your people around you, just even one or two, is, I think, critical for, for getting through tough times for sure, um, I, I think community is so important.

Well, often conservation GIS can be a fairly isolating like many people work in nonprofits that are relatively small, they don't have huge amounts of staff. I mean, uh, in our organization Sustainable forestry Initiative, Stephanie's one half-time GIS person and that's it. Right? That's hard, right?

But if you find, yeah, find your community and, and often, you know, technologists are not, you know, sometimes they're not as social. So it's like yeah you gotta take that extra step to to get out and reach out and be part of something and you can feel the release in your chest.

I mean last last week in YMCA the Rockies in the gorgeous Estes Park, Colorado, the number of people who came up to me and we're just like, oh my God, I've found my people like I'm so connected now to some. Thing I didn't have a connection to before and I feel differently about myself, my job, and the world.

The best feeling in the world is to laugh 100% with your colleagues, with your like your like-minded colleagues, a real good hearty laugh. I mean, can you think about the last time you had a real good hearty laugh where you were just tears coming out your face? I mean. Yeah, there's, there's a hot spot on the map and that's part of Colorado last week where that was going on.

Yeah, now I'm picturing tears flying out of your face. Sorry for you in the front row. Watch yourself.

A little Gallagher here.

Yeah, there you go. All right. But yeah, I don't know, like, um, you know, it's funny that we're talking about a lot of this and, and like some of the theme I hear, and I've heard this many times and uh I really want your perspectives on this, um, you know, I, you know, somebody will say, I'm an introvert, right? I'm an introvert, I can't go talk to people, I can't relate, I can't reach out, I can only do the data.

Um, and I, you know, I would say like, I think sometimes a lot of that is, is, you know, self-doubt, we all have that. Everybody's got imposter syndrome, we all struggle with things like that, but like, Uh, I'm an introvert in theory, right? When, when I, I want to go home at the end. I love doing this. I have a great time, but I also like being by myself. I'm like, OK, cool, that's over. No one talked to me, right?

Um, but that doesn't mean I don't do it, right? And I would never have known unless I tried, and I feel like so often like we have challenges with that.

So I don't know if you have moments where you're like, I can't believe I'm doing this, and then you do it and you're done. I don't know if you have stories like that, but. I maybe Kelly has one.

I could see it pointing at me.

Yeah, I mean, I had a feeling.

Well, we, we were on a panel with a couple of us yesterday in a session, and I, I was like, did we overshare in that panel and some of our like vulnerable stories and mine not enough oversharing in the world as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I guess that vulnerability is the bravery, right? It is. But being loud, um, yeah, no, I mean there's so many times, gosh, that we've failed in my life and I think the story that you're referring to Nic is like I went to college and, uh, studied geography and God I was so scared of everything at that moment but I remember there was one class that I went to and it was one of those live exams and asking a question.

And I'd had a panic attack and I left the room and like had to pep talk myself in the hallway of coming back and like fighting for it and fighting like I didn't know what I was fighting for at that time but just like fighting to find a better version of myself and and like come up with the gumption and get back in the room and dust yourself off and keep moving forward and like.

Yeah, we just do. You put 1 ft in front of the other and you find, do you feel like you had something inside speaking to you, telling you to go back?

Because I've had the, I have had this moment before where I know we've been scientists, but let's explore the irrational, yeah, like I had an interview with the Environmental Protection Commission when I was first getting started there and I went to the wrong parking garage in the city and then I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna be late. I've never had a full on can't breathe panic attack in my life and in that moment I almost like hyperventilated actually I did hyperventilate one time in my life only because I felt like something was telling me you have to be there.

Anybody, I mean, how did you walk back in? Were you like, hey, yeah, sorry about that. Uh, I'm good now. Like what?

I don't know. Is that what happened where they were like, Oh, you're? I mean, I didn't like be like, yeah, I'm back, and I like slithered in the side and like sat down on my desk and like quietly glossed all over the moment.

But no, I mean like we were talking about just finding like the fire in the pit of your belly of like being like I am not going to be the me at my weakest moment. I'm gonna, you have to, yeah, I don't.

You know, now we're getting preachy. No, this is it's great. I love it.

I, you know, I'm, I'm anxious to answer this question because it's something I'm super passionate about. We have 20,000 people that come to this conference. Not everyone is the same, and, um, usually my kiosk is like right up front, so we get a lot of people just coming into the room downstairs, the expo floor that's massive.

And we have our staff that helps support it, and I have trained and told the staff, and we've designed the kiosk in such a way. That you're gonna find someone who is maybe they come up and you can tell they come up and they're kind of interested but they're introverted or they're scared to ask a question or whatever it is and there's two things there that I think because there's some people that are afraid to communicate and then there's people who aren't and I think as for people who aren't I'm, I'm not, I'm not one of those.

I have to read the room a little bit with them, test the waters. I don't wanna be overbearing, but I want them to invite them into a conversation. And maybe they're not comfortable immediately talking to me, but what we've done with our kiosk is we have like 5 kind of high topic questions that they can click on the kiosk and start exploring, and that allows us to have a conversation.

And I train my staff that look you're gonna have different kinds of people and you can just find different ways to connect with them and invite them into this because we can't expect everyone in our community, especially our community, you know, our Venn diagram of of the the nerds. Circle, right?

And we have to again find our strengths in communication, invite people in and just allow them to be who they are and ultimately they will kind of come out of their shell and we'll find that thing with them that shines.

Yeah, is the is the is the first question did you lose your bird hat? Um, because that would have been helpful to me. I'm just saying.

Oh, I know it was not, they were, it was a wonderful moment truly that is, that is a wonderful moment. We have a great community, so yeah, you did get your hat back. I did. It's still here, you know, um, but you know, Healy, uh, you, you mentioned a story yesterday too, and, and like one, you know, talking about how you started working, uh, you basically created a job for yourself.

I found out later you also created, uh, your degree, um, and I, I wanna, I wanna hear a little bit about that, and I want to hear about that spark. I think a lot of times, you know, like. You know, everybody is a little different. Like for me, like finding what I like to look at like to do took forever and it seems like you were like, I am doing this, and that's incredible.

I mean, sort of the, the pro, the reason I had to write my own major at UC San Diego is so I, I got my degree in the Devonian and back then. Back then we were in an era of micro micro specialization.

Like you had to just totally specialize in something. It's like, well, I want to understand life on Earth and Earth and, and like there was no major for that. So I essentially double majored and double minored, but I, I in ecology and then in earth sciences.

Uh, but I had to write my own major to be able to weave all of those things together because they wanted to send you down this super specialized track. And I vividly remember my college advisor saying, you're never gonna get a job. You're never gonna get a job because you're so rare.

Where are they now.

Um, so that it's just like I that that curiosity to understand life and the environment and how they had co-evolved together. I didn't really know what I was gonna do with it. I just knew that that's what I had to understand in order to be able to be effective at saving nature, which was like I'm gonna save nature for a job. They didn't have those jobs back then, but at least I was able to get an education that supported it further on.

Well, and I think that's so important now. Too, like we're, we're with the advent of AI and all of these students being in school being told that you need to be a computer scientist, like that's the only way you're gonna get a job, right?

Like that's an environmental science degree, right? I'm like, and but then there's no ecology degree. I'm like, oh God, but I think it's like these, these specialties like we have to be these kind of T-shaped people like know a broad, a broad area and be focused, like be an expert in something so people know what to like tag you like we have.

A great scientist that works with us on the preserve and poor thing is still known as the pig girl from like doing work on wild boars in um her graduate but she does so much more. She works on fire now and she works on movement data and so many things around that that like you know these kids that are coming out with these computer science degrees and not getting jobs right now because AI is taking over all the computer science entry level jobs.

Like I think that there's so much more you can learn from your story Helia. Like create your own opportunity of bringing these disciplines together and knowing these ways of knowledge across these silos that like computer science is a tool it's a it's a helpful way, but like these knowledge and patterns and things about how we think about the natural world or the built world or energy cycles or anything, those are things you have to bring to that.

I think the theme is don't accept the path. Yeah, yeah, create the path. I mean literally that like. When I got my PhD, I'm like, I want to do conservation science research and I want to do education and outreach. It's like, where can you even do that? It's like, oh, a natural history museum.

I can do biodiversity science research and millions of people walk through the door who are getting educated about the natural world. Oh, which natural history museum might need something like that? Oh, California Academy of Sciences doesn't have an applied science research program. I'm gonna write up a proposal to start one and go find the money.

Like, not all paths are already determined for you. You, you have more opera. I mean, that's not a normal path and it's not an easy path, but there aren't so many easy paths anymore and the more that we create the ones that we want, the more like committed and impactful and successful you're gonna be.

I see this image in my mind right now right now we're a node on a map, and each one of you has the opportunity to go off, and I feel like we're gonna go off into our world and create all these dendritic tendrils going out across a map on our own individual paths all connected to a moment. I think that's lovely.

Dendritic. That's a great, well, last year it was the intelligent nervous system. It was my word of the day. I had to weave it into the podcast. Yeah, you can check that off your box now. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good for days.

Yeah good, good word. That's a great word.

It is, and I love it gives us a little insight into the inner workings of Sunny's brain, a dangerous game.

She's looking at your face and are you a pin? Are you a dot? Are you some emoji? And where are you going after this? And she sees a little trail behind you.

Um, but I wanna be a dendrite now. Yeah, yeah, I know, right? Yeah, we all are. It is what color do you wanna be like kicking your game piece.

So, uh, you were getting close to our time here, so we're gonna start building the other end of the thinly sliced bread here, but, um, huh, uh, oh yeah, OK, but, yeah, no one laughed. You hear how no one laughed.

Well, now you know how it feels.

Oh brutal. Nic is a comedian. Nic is a comedian has done stand up, so there's a backstory behind this. Um, he has I was helping her work on her tight five. That's what was happening, and she's like, What are you doing? I can, I'm good. I'm like, right, yeah, yeah, I'll build my own sandwich. Thank you.

So, um. Your work, it's just one more question about your work. You mentioned the big girl. What would someone, if, what are you? What's your, I'm, I'm Sunny the what girl? What is, what are, what's your work Elizabeth that you do? What do people come to you for?

Oh man. That's a heavy question. I don't know. You know, I've actually, I'll answer it this way. I, I think I'm the connector girl. I'm, I'm good at nothing if not just connecting people. I don't, I, I like things. I tinker with things, but I don't go deeply into anything, but I know a lot of people and something I've said to our community throughout the week is make your connections because you don't know if tomorrow there's gonna be a tangible project and way to work with, work with them or if it's gonna be 5.

Or 10 years from now there's people I've met in my life from 20 years ago that I reached back out to and I'm like oh my god, that thing we did in college, do you still like whatever and they're like oh I'm doing this bloodsucking job at a consulting firm but yeah I've got it on my drive, you know, you never know and so yeah I think that's the one thing I'm good at is just connecting people.

I have some of your pottery, so you are, I know you are good at way more things than just that. I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna buy that one thing I'm good at for Sonny Fleming, that's not true, not true.

Uh, you guys, for me, my, my word is biodiversity. That's a word that was formed when I was in undergrad, biodiversity, the diversity of life. I'm a biodiversity scientist, a biodiversity aficionado. I think biodiversity is actually right up there with love as the most important word in the, in, in our language.

If we truly understood the interconnectedness of all life on Earth, we would live on a different planet. So I am all about biodiversity and, and all of its implications through evolutionary history. If we could just let that sink in a little bit more, our community would be much deeper and more mutually understanding.

Yeah, God, can I just be biodiversity twin Healey? I, I, I might take that. I will follow Healy wherever she goes.

Yeah, I will throw like a passion and uh, like a passion, a passion girl, right? I love passion fruit, so it's rolling with me anyways, and I just throw that into it because I think like passion, whatever we do, passion for nature, passion for our community, passion for our ambitions, passion for throw the fire into the mix and.

I think we'd all be in a better place.

I hear passion for biodiversity requires connection and community.

Yes, yes, it works. Anyone else have a work? It's a fun game to play.

Yeah, Nic, hey Nic and Laura, what are, what are your what are you all? What are your words words.

Uh, I'm a wildebeest.

Oh.

That was so fast. Yeah, you're on that. I mean, is this spirit animals we're talking about, or like it's gone beyond spirit animal for me. I'm just a wildebeest.

I do so many things that people can't describe. Am I a goat? Am I a zebra? Am I what an antelope? What is this thing? What is a wildebeest? So I'm a podcasting wildebeest. There you go.

Uh, biodiversity is a thing. No, I'm, I honestly like I love making connections. It's the thing I love to do the most, and I felt. Uh, you talk about like, um, the way that we build community. I have one of those, you know, consulting jobs that you were mentioning earlier. I, I looked at you and I, yeah, I know. I, I felt that. I felt it, um, but there's lots of different ways to engage, um, you know, in many different ways and, and for me like.

Finding ways to to connect people and not just the people that we're talking to but the everyone here at this audience, it's incredible to see how many people are here listening to us, um, and how many more will listen when we post this and and that kind of thing, um, I'm, uh, almost always humbled by like someone saying I love that you're doing this, thank you for all that you do, um, and it's like, oh, people are paying attention and that's a nice thing and it's like a wonderful way to, to.

Feel like you're doing something. And so when we talk about like how people do things, there's so many different ways. It doesn't have to be a podcast, it doesn't have to be um here at this every user conference, but it should.

Um, but like, you know, that's kind of like the joy of, of this whole thing.

Nic, I have to ask you, no, I think the gravity of the body of work you all have created together is about to be really real for you. You've left a really amazing body of work behind. You continue building on it, but you're about to be a father for the first time.

I know.

What does that mean for you to be building a body of work with the environmental community and interviewing all these interesting people and all these interdisciplines and knowing that like that's a gift that you're leaving for your daughter to stop.

She's been trying to make me cry. That's what that is to say everybody in the front row, watch yourselves, tears might come. Uh, we were talking before the show and I think the number one thing that I would want my daughter to take from, you know, from me, like the thing I would want to give her is curiosity, so maybe that's actually my word. I'm a very curious person and I hope to God she is too, and that's really what I want more than anything, um, and I don't want to think about it any longer because then I will.

And we're out of time. So we've got to get to our, our last piece of the thinly sliced bread here is the 30 seconds on your hobbies. What do you do when you're not working?

Right now I'm fly fishing.

Oh, that was so fast. OK, why?

Uh, well, you know me, hobby of hobbies. This is my latest hobby, but I get out there. I'm so focused on, on trying not to bust my butt, um, and I don't know. I just go out there and I zen out, and I love being out there. It's so quiet. I don't see another human, which I do a lot of that interaction, and I'm, I think I'm like you, natural introvert, and yeah, man, I've really gotten into fly fishing. Absolutely love it.

That's very cool.

God, I don't know if this qualifies as a hobby because it's still more science. Um, but I have a side gig as a seahorse scientist. I study the taxonomy, evolution, and conservation genetics of seahorses and pipe fishes and sea dragons and pygmy pipe horses and pygmy dragon like they are the most amazing group of fish on Earth, and there is nothing in the world like having a seahorse hold your hand.

Oh my God, God, why do I always have to follow? That's unbelievable. Why did we put her in the middle?

I love seahorses, man.

Well, it sounds like we need to all get together so I can have a seahorse hold my hand while fly fishing. Um, oh, what am I doing right now? I have two little kids, so I am everywhere at all places at all times, but I think this curiosity thing, Nic, is so fun, like getting to see the landscapes that I love through their eyes right now.

They get to come out to the preserve with me and like spend time out there and see animals and do all that stuff. My other weird side hobby right now is, um, I'm a new tortoise mama. We have a new tortoise, so now I'm like a chef for my tortoise. Like I love compiling all of it a vegetables?

It's a salcada, an African sulcada. We inherited her, so she's hilarious and she's such a community builder. We take her out and with neighborhood walks now and like everyone comes to see the tortoise and it's takes like 2 hours and I don't have to do anything. I just make her breakfast.

It's, I have to say, OK, you don't, you probably, you don't know this but. That was like my research was on box turtles. So I'm a big box turtle guy, big turtle person.

Love how they're like, Hey, what's up? How are you doing? I'll, I'll see you in a minute. That's how a turtle walks, right? Um, they're just like people. They are so picky and they're like, I want, I had this yesterday. I'm not having it again today.

God, it's such a pleasure and everyone thinks it's lettuce. No, but you need, yeah, that's too fun.

All right, so no, we really are totally running out of time. Before we let you go, our last question is always. Um, if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do it? We're gonna start with Kelly this time,

OK, um, yeah, find me dangerman Preserve.org. Everything that we're doing at the preserve is centered there. You can find all of the amazing people and my colleagues that are working on site there. We've got so many resources including all the stuff digital twin, if you're interested in that. Find us at dangerman Preserve.org.

You can find me at forests.org, HealyHamilton@forests.org, or through the Society for Conservation GIS, which I really recommend that everybody check out because it is a community that embodies everything we've been talking about today.

ESRI Conservation, we just launched our new website. We have an email list that we're building, so we're gonna be building community through that. You can sign up, um, on that email list on Eri just look for ESRI Conservation. We're really proud of it. Things are gonna change. Give me feedback, you know, you're like wow, this is really not hitting the mark, Sonny, um, and yeah, I'm really. Proud of that. And then if you want to reach me personally, always on LinkedIn is the the best easiest way.

The future of conservation at ESRI is in fantastic hands. We are so excited to have Sunny at the helm.

Yes, yes, that's could not agree more. Yeah, we can applaud for that. We can do that, yeah.

Try to get Sunny to cry now, yeah.

Yeah, I'm easy to make.

OK, well, well, that's our show. Thank you so much for joining. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody.