Kurt brings a wealth of varied experience to his role as Executive director, including management of a habitat restoration program, research and teaching at UC Davis, and significant work in outreach, research, and education in community, nonprofit and academic settings.
Kurt has an educational background in Cultural Anthropology, as well as Physiology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He earned his doctorate in Restoration Ecology from the University of California, Davis in 2011. His doctoral research was focused on how variations in initial conditions affect the outcome of restoration practices in California grasslands. As a National Science Foundation funded postdoctoral researcher, he was able to scale up his research to look at how a changing climate may affect future restoration projects. Following his postdoc, Kurt worked with Audubon California's Working Waterways Program where he managed multiple restoration projects on private agricultural lands in collaboration with local, state and federal agencies, nonprofits and organizations.