Theresa was raised on the mainland in urban and suburban settings. When she was 10, her family visited the Grand Canyon and she firstsaw a park ranger and decided she wanted to be one. But she also wantedto be a hula dancer in Hawai'i. "But by the time I got here (in 1990) my knees were shot from hiking up anddown steep hills," at conservation jobs on the mainland, Theresa said,so she never took a hula lesson.
But working as a biologist for The Nature Conservancy's NaturalHeritage Program for three years in the early 90s,she traveled around the islands, searching for rare plants and animalsand biologically significant areas. Leaving The Conservancy to pursuegraduate education, she studied the biology of the endangered'ōpe'ape'a, or Hawaiian bat (Lasiurus cinereus semotus), which led to a thesis that earned her a MS in Zoology from the University of Hawai'i in 2001. Rejoining the Conservancy in 2002, she has served as Coordinatorof Landscape Conservation Programs statewide, as ConservationPlanner, and as Statewide GIS Coordinator, her currentposition.
This page last revised 28 August 2008 by S M Gon III