Devyani Kar
Devyani Kar
Devyani Kar is the coastal projects and programs manager for Environmental Defense Fund’s Mississippi River Delta restoration program. She monitors and tracks priority coastal restoration projects from Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan as they advance from feasibility and planning to engineering and design to construction. She is also chair of the projects and programs committee for the Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition. Devyani’s background includes coastal project management, coastal science research, hazard mitigation and urban planning. Prior to EDF, she …
Alisha Renfro
Alisha Renfro is a coastal scientist with the National Wildlife Federation working on the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign. Alisha has a M.S. in Marine Science from University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a Ph.D. in Marine and Atmospheric Science from Stony Brook University. Over the past 15 years, she has worked in a variety of coastal environments, including beaches, barrier islands, forested wetlands, and freshwater and saltwater marshes. Her scientific research has focused on examining sediment transport and …
Lindsay Nakashima
Lindsay joined the Audubon Louisiana’s Baton Rouge office with experience in coastal geomorphology and GIS/GPS/UAV applications. He implements ESRI desktop and web-based GIS applications and utilizes RTK GPS technology and UAV capabilities as analytic tools for project-specific GIS and photogrammetric analyses. Lindsay has a strong publication record in the field of nearshore sediment transport, shore zone mapping, and coastal zone management. He participates in scientifically based conservation and restoration efforts primarily affiliated with the Restore the Mississippi River Delta campaign …
Karen Westphal
Karen joined Audubon in 2009 and brought nearly three decades of experience and research in coastal Louisiana to the team. Karen provides science support involving coastal processes, ecology and biogeomorphology (how living things affect land change) including expertise with coastal vegetation, oil spill impacts, hurricane impacts, and coastal habitat restoration. Karen became involved with the Louisiana Master Naturalist Program at the roll-out meeting in Baton Rouge in 2012, was a member of the LMN Greater New Orleans charter class in …
Erik Johnson
Erik joined Audubon in April 2011 as a Conservation Biologist for the Mississippi Flyway and Gulf Coast Initiative where he provided science-support and guidance for Audubon’s strategic planning process and building upon conservation and monitoring efforts in the region. Before coming to Audubon, Erik’s graduate work at Louisiana State University included researching the effects of forest fragmentation on Amazonian bird communities and understanding the effects of fire management on grassland birds in pine savannas of the southeastern U.S., and he …
Theryn Henkel
Dr. Theryn Henkel is currently the Assistant Director for the Coastal Sustainability Program at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, a local not-for-profit located in New Orleans, Louisiana. Theryn completed her undergraduate studies in environmental science at the University of Long Island at Southampton then went on to complete her Master’s Degrees in Applied Ecology at Indiana University. She obtained her Doctorate degree at Tulane University in Ecology, focusing on forested wetland recovery from damage caused by hurricanes. She is currently …
Shannon Cunniff
Building on her 27 years working for the federal government at the intersection of water resources engineering and environmental policy, Shannon Cunniff leads EDF’s coastal resilience program. She develops strategies for accelerating the creation of engineering design guidance for natural infrastructure to ensure both engineering and environmental success and expanding means for financing restoration of natural infrastructure. Prior to EDF, Shannon worked at the U.S. Department of Defense as the executive director for Chemical and Material Risk Management, where she …
Rachel Rhode
Rachel is an Analyst on the Coastal Projects & Programs team for EDF’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration program. She is also the science and projects team coordinator for Restore the Mississippi River Delta. In this capacity, she reviews scientific literature for the latest research and tracks coastal restoration projects in Louisiana to identify challenges and barriers in project implementation and develop strategies and solutions to overcome. Rachel received both her BA and Master’s Degree in Marine Science and did her …
Natalie Peyronnin Snider
Natalie ensures sound science is being used to plan, design, implement and adaptively manage coastal restoration projects and policies, with a focus on system dynamics. Natalie leads the Restore the Mississippi River Delta science committee, a multi-organizational team of scientists that provides the foundation for the campaign by advancing scientific understanding, providing technical support and science communication, and ensuring science-based decision making processes are utilized to achieve large-scale, long-term restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. Previously, Natalie was a senior …