Martha completed her MSc in Conservation Leadership at Colorado State University in 2019, and she is currently a PhD student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Dr. Salerno and Dr. Solomon’s labs in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources department. Martha is a conservation social scientist who has been dedicated to the eastern Africa region since studying abroad in Kenya and Tanzania with the School for Field Studies in 2014 during her undergraduate studies at Scripps College. After that, Martha was a conservation education coordinator and Princeton in Africa Fellow at an NGO in western Uganda, and she returned to the region to research human-elephant conflict for her masters project. In between stints in Uganda, Martha was a research assistant on a long term hamadryas baboon project in Awash National Park, Ethiopia. A New York native with over 2 years of experience in the eastern Africa region, Martha is currently researching the chain of decision-making in transboundary African elephant governance and management in the forested regions of the Albertine Rift. 

Aside from academia, Martha is  a disabilities advocate and Colorado’s Chapter Leader for T1International, an organization that works towards insulin and diabetes supply affordability and accessibility worldwide. When she’s not researching or advocating, she’s binge watching Survivor and playing her Nintendo Switch.