Heidi Kretser, Ph.D.

Director of Rights + Communities for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Conservation Program

Ph.D. in Natural Resources Policy and Management, Cornell University

Heidi Kretser is the Director of Rights + Communities for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Conservation Program, the lead of the Social Safeguards Management Team and serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources & the Environment where she’s affiliated with the Center for Conservation Social Sciences. For 30 years (25 with WCS) Heidi has worked to improve the conservation of wildlife and wildlands by incorporating tools and perspectives from the social sciences into applied conservation research, planning, practice, and decision-making. She has devised strategies for reducing the impacts of private lands development and recreation on wildlife, built constituents for conservation by creating effective communication and community-engagement based on understanding people’s relationships and interactions with wildlife, and generated collaborative approaches for increasing community and natural resource governance capacity that achieve conservation outcomes for wildlife while safeguarding human well-being across diverse constituents. In 2018, Heidi shifted to an entirely Global remit with the Rights + Communities Team providing oversight on conservation projects involving or affecting Indigenous People and Local Communities and providing training and development for teams implementing a human rights-based approach to conservation and safeguards practices in the field. Heidi additionally serves on the WCS Institutional Review Board and the WCS Graduate Scholarship Program Review Committee. She completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University in Natural Resources Policy and Management and holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry in Social Ecology and Conservation Biology.