Wildlife Conservation
Jessie Moravek is one of the first Luce Scholars ever to be placed in Nepal. She will work with Wildlife Conservation Nepal, a non-governmental organization. With about 40 staff and 600 volunteers throughout the country, WCN works to conserve and protect endangered species and their habitat while protecting the rights of the local people by providing training to uplift their living standard through non-timber forest products, agro-forestry and farming. It conducts environment impact assessment studies to safeguard forest and other ecologically important areas, and carries out outreach and mentorship program in schools and colleges to promote youth leadership on conservation and environmental awareness.
Jessie graduated in June 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Biology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is interested in ecology and conservation, and enjoys exploring nature along the shores of Lake Michigan. She has helped assess groundwater availability on a national forest in Utah, worked in a carbon laboratory at Northwestern to identify carbon sources that may contribute to climate change, and spent a semester studying salt marsh ecology at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She was a “2015 Best Speaker” at the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Exposition, and serves as a representative to the Environmental Science Student Advisory Board. Through an NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship, she studied salmon conservation in Seattle, Washington. She presented this work at the Hollings Scholar Symposium in Washington, D.C. and a poster at the American Geophysical Union 2015 Fall Meeting, and used the collected data for a senior thesis about salmon habitat restoration. Throughout her research experiences, Jessie has strived to connect with people and communities. She wrote for the campus nature magazine In Our Nature and advises younger environmental students. She was also a member of the Northwestern University Marching Band and the Philharmonia Orchestra.