Before graduate school, I managed development and communications campaigns for animal and environmental research and advocacy organizations in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. While working in these non-profits, I found myself returning to a deceptively simple question: why do some efforts to change entrenched practices succeed while others provoke resistance? I became a sociologist because I needed to explore this question. My research on environmental politics grew out of this earlier experience and eventually led me to study the institutions and organized interests that shape what kinds of change become socially and politically possible.

Outside of academic life, I am an experienced birder and nature photographer, as well as a longtime protector of urban wild denizens, with a record of rescuing countless raccoons, pigeons, deer, rabbits, gulls, skunks, and others. One such rescue effort became an organizing project in Central Park: Central Park Wildlife Taskforce — A Story of the Struggles of Wild Critters in New York City.