Breadcrumb
Environment & Community, M.A. | Class of
Flora Brain
Field Institute Director
Employer: Mattole Restoration Council
Job description: I create field-based learning opportunities for rural Mattole River watershed community members and university students, with the goal of enhancing grounded understandings of ecology, community, stewardship, and watershed restoration.
About Flora
I work for a community-based watershed council, and my E&C experience helped me deconstruct myths embedded in both the Western environmental movement and capitalism. It also gave me an increased understanding of how power and privilege function and helped me investigate my own privileges. My undergraduate degree is in the natural sciences, and my E&C education gave me an ability to critique the hegemony of dominant narratives, explore the phenomenology of perception, and practice being in challenging roles as a listener. My E&C experience has helped me recognize that ecological restoration is most meaningful when cross-pollinated with other disciplines and knowledge systems. I am grateful to the outstanding professors and my fellow E&C students, all of whom were brilliantly inquisitive, fierce and ultimately compassionate individuals with diverse life stories. Exploring the E&C curriculum topics together as a small community of learners was deeply impactful on my career, as it has been on my life. My E&C experience continually helps me view my environmental work through various important lenses, making it at once more complex, more challenging, and more gratifying.