Michael Hopkins
Michael Hopkins
Dr. Michael Hopkins is the Coastal Program Director at the Pontchartrain Conservancy (PC). He is originally from Biloxi, MS and has lived in New Orleans for 11 years. He holds a Bachelor of Science in geology from the University of Southern Mississippi and a Ph.D. in earth and environmental sciences from Tulane University. He began working for PC in 2016 as a staff GIS specialist and coastal scientist and became program assistant director in 2019. He then became program director …
Tasia Denapolis
Tasia is a NOLA girl that graduated from University of New Orleans with a Master’s degree in biology. She wanted to use her degree to improve the environment here in her home state. She is a fisheries biologist with a focus on habitat suitability modeling, and works on fisheries related issues with the MRD.
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 …
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 …
Rachel Rhode
Rachel is a Manager on the Resilient Coasts and Watersheds team for EDF’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration program. She is also the Projects Committee chair 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 thesis work …