CBO Director Leah Gerber and graduate student affiliate Beth Tellman recently organized a panel entitled “Expanding diversity in the next generation of ecology” at the 100^th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America conference in Baltimore in August 2015.

Dr. Gerber and Beth, along with Marlene Kaplan (NOAA Deputy Director of Education), Brigitte Griswold (Director of Youth Programs at The Nature Conservancy), Nyeema Harris (Director’s Fellow for World Wildlife Fund International), Maclovia Quintana (Yale School of Forestry), Kevin Coyle, VP of Education and Training (National Wildlife Federation); and Teresa Mourad (Director of Education and Diversity Programs (ESA) prepared a workshop that was attended by a group of more than 30 people, mostly minority students, ranging in age from high school to post doc.

It is impossible to capture in this post the courage, vulnerability, difficulty, and depth of the discussion here, but we hope to continue this conversation with the ESA board, amongst the panelists, and in a published commentary piece with student attendees as lead authors. We are excited to take these lessons back to CBO at ASU as well, and reflect on what we heard to better address the lack of human diversity within our field, the implications this has for biodiversity outcomes, and redefining how CBO can contribute to diversity by partnering with conservation organization in the US as well as actors across our own campus.