2018 Keynote Speaker

Cynthia Malone is a scholar-activist from New York City. As a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, Cynthia is weaving together ecology and Black feminist geographies towards a decolonial approach to the science and practice of conservation. She is an advocate for equity and inclusion in STEM, serving as co-chair of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee. She fuses her scholarship and advocacy with social justice organizing for Black liberation, serving as organizing co-chair of Black Youth Project 100’s New York City in 2015. In 2017, she was named one of Grist magazine’s 50 “Fixers” in recognition of her work.

Prior to embarking on her PhD, Cynthia supported community conservation organizations in the Solomon Islands as Manager of Pacific Programs at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. Cynthia holds a Masters in Conservation Biology from Columbia University, where she explored human-wildlife conflict alongside industrial oil palm expansion in Cameroon. During her undergraduate honor degrees in Zoology and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she completed fieldwork on orangutan nesting ecology in Central Kalimantan, Borneo and spatial analyses of industrial oil palm expansion across Indonesia.