Dee Boersma

Dr. Boersma holds the Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science at the University of Washington and is the founder and executive editor of Conservation magazine – an award winning publication dedicated to conservation science. Dubbed the “Jane Goodall of penguins” by the New York Times, seabirds are her passion. Dr. Boersma considers penguins “marine sentinels,” sounding the alarm on environmental threats to ocean ecosystems.

For over 30 years, she has been the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s study of Magellanic penguins at Punta Tombo, Argentina, home of the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins. Dr. Boersma and her students follow the lives of individual penguins, monitor the colony, and develop the data needed to plan effective conservation efforts. In the Galápagos Islands, she is building “condos” to increase the Galápagos penguin population.

Dr. Boersma was the recipient of a 2009 Heinz Foundation award for achievements leading toward a cleaner, greener and more sustainable world, a recipient of a 2010 Fulbright fellowship to study wildlife and in 2011 was named one of the Nature Conservancy’s “Conservation Heroes of the last 50 years.” In 2012, she received the Ocean Conservation Award from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.