People Type: Staff

Having grown up in Maine, Jessie has long held a love for the ocean and is excited to continue her work to help build resilient and sustainable fisheries and ecosystems.

Jessie graduated from Colby College in 2017 with a B.A. in Environmental Science. While at Colby, Jessie dove into the scallop aquaculture world in Maine through an internship with the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership. She continued this work as the Aquaculture Manager at Hurricane for two years and later spent time working on commercial oyster farms in Washington State and midcoast Maine. Jessie also spent four winters pursuing her passion for skiing in Park City, UT as an alpine ski racing coach for the Park City Ski Team.

In her free time, Jessie loves sailing, kayaking, scuba diving, skiing, mountain and road biking, and eating local Maine seafood.

Emily’s work aims to build resilience in fishing communities and ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine through collaborative network building, participatory research, and advancing fisheries co-management. Much of this work is focused on intertidal and sea run fisheries, including shellfish and river herring, through direct partnerships with communities to address the challenges they face.

Before joining Manomet, Emily worked for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation, where she collaborated with partners to integrate climate and ecosystem information into fisheries management. Previously, she worked with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries researching fishery diversification. She has milked goats in Vermont, worked on seaweed and shellfish aquaculture research in Connecticut, and written about food policy for Edible magazine. Emily received a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment, and a Master in food systems from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.

In her free time, she enjoys ceramics, sewing and dyeing clothes, biking, gardening, and spending as much time on or in the water as possible.

Allie Hayser joined Manomet’s Georgia Bight Shorebird Conservation Initiative to support and expand ongoing shorebird programs in outreach, education, and conservation. She is focused on projects that work to manage disturbance of migrating shorebirds, understanding horseshoe crab populations, education for ecotourism, and developing stewardship programs.

Allie grew up on Tybee Island, Georgia. In her free time, she enjoys boating, surfing, reading, running, and taking adventures in nature. She attended Georgia Southern University with a B.S in Biology, a B.S in Geology, and minored in Geography. During college, Allie worked with a sea turtle program on Saint Catherine’s Island, where she also studied barrier island formation and horseshoe crab ecology. After college, she worked for several conservation, education, and research programs in California, North Carolina, and Georgia, as well as a surf instructor in Nicaragua.

Recently, Allie has worked with Georgia Department of Natural Resources in projects involving American Oystercatchers, Red Knots, Whimbrels, and other local species of shorebirds. Working with Manomet, she hopes to bring her knowledge in local beach communities and experience in conservation together to create lasting changes on the southeast coast.

As Vice President for Environmental Education and Outreach, Molly works to support and expand Manomet’s education work as a major pillar of its conservation mission across the western hemisphere. She believes that we can only achieve long-lasting conservation success when community members are motivated and empowered as environmental stewards, and that students and teachers make some of the most effective community ambassadors.  Molly has a particular interest in outdoor learning at schools, and in how we can build the capacity of schools to help students connect to nature by learning outside.

Molly joined Manomet in 2021 and brings more than 25 years of professional experience as a scientist, educator, and nonprofit leader. Prior to Manomet, she served as chief scientist and Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Project Oceanology, a nonprofit science education organization in Groton, Connecticut. Molly led the education staff there through a significant rebuilding and expansion process, doubling the number of full-time educational staff, expanding the scope and reach of Project Oceanology’s education programs, and building partnerships both locally and nationally.

Molly is a native New Englander who grew up in Maine and New Hampshire and also has family roots on Cape Cod. She graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors, received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington, and spent a year as a science policy fellow in the United States Congress. She held postdoctoral positions at the University of Connecticut and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where her research focused on metamorphic transitions and life history evolution of marine invertebrates, particularly crustaceans. Before joining the nonprofit world, Molly was an Assistant and then an Associate Professor of Biology at McDaniel College in Maryland.

Why Manomet?

Manomet allows me to bring together my two professional passions – education and science – in the context of a highly effective, mission-driven nonprofit organization. That’s been extremely rewarding, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve been able to do myself here, as well as the work the broader organization does, writ large. Second, the team here at Manomet is dedicated, extraordinarily talented, and deeply committed to our shared mission, and it is a privilege to be part of it.

Juanita Fonseca, of Mazatlán, Mexico, joined the WHSRN Executive Office in August 2020 as a Shrimp and Shorebird Conservation Specialist. Her activities focus on promoting and implementing best management practices that help integrate shorebird conservation with shrimp farming in Mexico, and supporting research on the use of these production systems by shorebirds in other parts of the Pacific Flyway. She also helps evaluate opportunities to develop new partnerships to strengthen the network of WHSRN sites in Mexico.

For several years, Juanita has been involved in different bird conservation and research projects, particularly in shrimp farms where she undertook her doctoral thesis project, evaluating their functionality as foraging sites for shorebirds. Her results have generated knowledge which has served producers in the development and implementation of best management practices. She is also part of the first collaborative network to install automated radio telemetry stations of the Wildlife Tracking System (Motus) in northwestern Mexico and collaborates with Environment Canada to monitor and evaluate shorebird connectivity using radio transmitters (nanotags) in the Pacific Flyway.

Juanita is a biologist and holds a PhD in Aquatic Resources Sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, México. In 2021 she was selected as a fellow of the Coastal Solutions program, and recently joined the National System of Researchers of her country.

I work at Manomet because it uses the best available science to develop effective management practices that help conserve species and their habitats while contributing to sustainable development. I am excited to be part of this organization and to be able to play an active role in science to contribute to problem solving to preserve biodiversity