People Type: Staff

Joaquín Aldabe, Ph.D. from Uruguay, joined the WHSRN Executive Office as Conservation Specialist to develop a hemispheric program on shorebird conservation in grasslands and rangelands.  Joaquin also supports data analysis and modeling to evaluate population trends and habitat-bird relationships on WHSRN sites to support habitat management.

Through rigorous scientific work and innovative media, Joaquin works with rural producers to generate alternative management proposals. His work combines field ornithology, ecology, statistic modeling, agrarian sciences, and rural extension.

Joaquin has been working on shorebird conservation for 15 years. He was part of the promoting team of Alianza del Pastizal (Southern Cone Grasslands Alliance), and was the first national coordinator of this initiative for five years. He has worked on more than 20 research and bird conservation projects,. He was Conservation Director at Aves de Uruguay, the Birdlife partner in Uruguay for seven years. In that role, Joaquin also served as the coordinator for the  Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA). He has been professor and researcher at the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay for 10 years

Joaquin holds a degree on Biological Sciences, a master’s degree on Ecology and Evolution, and a Ph.D. in Agrarian Sciences. He was recently incorporated in the Uruguayan National System of Researchers.

Julia joined the WHSRN Executive Office in April 2020 to develop an assessment of salt production and shorebird conservation, establishing better practices, and defining threats and benefits for shorebirds at salt production sites. Julia was born and raised in the southern part of Honduras and her experience growing up on her family’s salt farm gives her a different perspective, understanding the opportunities for a productive system to change their perception and become allies in conservation strategies for shorebirds.

After getting her degree in tourism and a master’s degree in project management, she began working her own project promoting environmental education tours in her family salt farm, receiving students from schools and universities that wanted to learn from salt production and mangrove ecosystems.

For her master’s degree, Julia’s thesis was on the importance of the mangrove ecosystem for salt production in Honduras. This gave her a broader view of the needs of salt production and conservation. Since then she has been working on implementing better practices and developing alternative products and services that can help create a new model of salt production. A model that is oriented to conservation, can be easily replicated, and that will promote the conservation of shorebirds in this productive system.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Schueler became Manomet’s fourth President in April 2020.

Lizzie’s career spans the nonprofit, corporate, and government sectors, with a particular emphasis on building and sustaining mission-driven public/private partnerships. Most recently, Lizzie served as Vice President, Markets and Supply Chains, overseeing World Wildlife Fund’s work to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate the key threats caused by commodity production globally. Previously, Lizzie worked for Microsoft Corporation where she led two different corporate social responsibility programs, first in the Middle East and Africa, and then globally. Her work at Microsoft included rolling out the Partners in Learning program in the Middle East and Africa hiring and leading 12+ staff in the region. She then led the Government Security Program globally, and a novel internet safety program requiring collaboration with national law enforcement agencies, globally. During her tenure at the United States Agency for International Development, she led technology partnerships with private companies under the Global Development Alliance.

A Massachusetts native, she is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is a self-professed “amateur yet enthusiastic” birder, and an avid outdoorswoman enjoying hiking, biking, kayaking, fly-fishing, and Nordic skiing.

Lisa joined the Shorebird Recovery Program at Manomet in 2008 and is responsible for a number of technical tasks in support of its mission. First, as a program associate, she maintained the WHSRN website, database, and social media outlets; developed and maintained the Site Assessment Tool database; created species- and site-based conservation mapping tools; provided shorebird data for WHSRN partners, and developed methods for using data in the strategies and action plans that WHSRN implements.

Currently, as the North American coordinator for the International Shorebird Survey, she develops and maintains the online ISS mapping tool, creates reports for Manomet scientists and partners, recruits and engages ISS volunteers through social media and newsletters, and finds creative ways to tell shorebird stories using ISS data.

Lisa holds an M.S. in Physics from the University of Arizona, and her background is in numerical analysis. After graduating with her M.S., she did data and image analysis on LIDAR systems for Arete Associates before helping to start a business with her future husband doing numerical analysis on ratings and viewing habits in public television.

Lisa is an avid birder. While living in Arizona, she coordinated the Tucson Christmas Bird Count and led field trips for the Tucson Audubon Society.  She currently leads trips for the South Shore Bird Club.

She is based at Manomet’s headquarters in Manomet, Massachusetts, where she works part-time with full-time dedication.

Marcela is native to Córdoba, Argentina, where she lives in Miramar de Ansenuza, a small town on the shore of Mar Chiquita Lake, one of the very first WHSRN sites (designated in 1989). She joined the WHSRN Executive Office team in 2019 as a Flyway Conservation Specialist, focused on the conservation of saline lakes. Among her activities, Marcela is working on an update of the Wilson’s Phalarope conservation plan and developing a protocol for boreal winter/austral summer surveys for the species. She is also working to strengthen the connections between communities and conservation efforts at inland salt lakes, with a primary focus on existing WHSRN sites. From 2014 until recently, Marcela was one of the two site representatives for Mar Chiquita Lake to the Argentine WHSRN Council.

Marcela has a degree in Biology from the National University of Córdoba (UNC), where she is currently undertaking PhD studies on the non-breeding ecology of Wilson’s Phalarope in central Argentina. Her odyssey with phalaropes began in 2012 at Great Salt Lake (Utah), where she spent the summer working on breeding ecology and habitat use as part of the Linking Communities initiative, sponsored by the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, Rio Tinto, Weber State University and BirdLife International. In 2013 she received a scholarship from National Audubon Society and the Weber State University to continue her work with the species at Great Salt Lake.

In recent years Marcela has been involved in many education and outreach activities in central Argentina, with the goal of involving her community in conservation activities and raising awareness of the importance of WHSRN sites for biodiversity preservation.