People

Have been seriving Pike County Soil and Water Conservation District for 4.5 years this is coming upon my 5th year.  My conservation office has mainly worked with farmers in prior years creating water quality plans and nutrient management plans.    Currently I am a cosmetologist working at Ulta Salon in the evenings and weekends, a Peer Support Specialist at Goodwill  Industries of Kentucky, and working to get my Enviornmental Education Certification which I will finish up at the beginning of 2025. My hobbies include gardening, forging fungis and plants, fishing, kyaking, hunting, painting, crafting, learning about science because it is ever evolving and changing.  My passion for science started at a very young age of watching my brother do experiments from building volcanoes to blasting small rockets.  Then evolved when I met some great scientists that became best friends of mine.  I was and am able to mentor under them and they have taught me a lot about natural science.  Cosmetology taught me more about the human body then any science class in high school or college I ever took.

The 518-acre Jay C. Hormel Nature Center preserve was established in 1971 and is located within the city limits of Austin, Minnesota. The Nature Center features restored and remnant prairie, hardwood forest, wetlands, meandering streams, and ten miles of trails for hiking & cross-country skiing.

Tania Marien is a podcast host and environmental careers correspondent. She is the founding editor of Transferable Solutions, a newsletter for environmental education professionals interested in expanding beyond the field to do cross-sector work. The theme for the newsletter is "Environmental Skills, Reimagined." Read the inaugural issue here.

Tania's projects draw on her experiences working as an independent environmental education professional, first as the full-time editor, educator, and bookseller at ArtPlantae and now as a podcast producer, writer, researcher, and network builder. Her freelance project explores how freelance environmental professionals contribute to environmental literacy. She believes that independent professionals are overlooked and that their professionalism and contributions to lifelong learning need to be recognized. Documenting their work is important because it fills the knowledge gap about how people learn about science and the environment outside of the classroom.

Tania is a contributor to The Carbon Almanac (Penguin Random House, 2022) and Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions (Springer Nature, 2024).

Learn more at talaterra.com.

 

Dedicated educator and mother committed to inspiring curiosity and a deep sense of belonging by connecting children to the natural world.

Rocco develops strategies and builds partnerships that advance appreciation for nature and enhance connections among thriving communities, environmental conservation, and healthy economies. His experience spans fifteen years in the conservation and environmental education sector and features a wide breadth of programmatic experiences from governmental, private, and NGO organizations.