Since 2002, Kristina Fisher has served as Associate Director of Think New Mexico, the nonprofit think tank that has led successful efforts to enact many landmark state laws, including laws ending predatory lending and creating a Strategic Water Reserve. In 2008, Kristina graduated first in her class from the University of New Mexico School of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Natural Resources Journal. She is a recipient of the national Harry S Truman Fellowship for Leadership and Public Service and the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Award for Excellence in Environmental Studies.

Kristina lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Phil Carter. Together, they help lead the all-volunteer Albuquerque Wildlife Federation (AWF), which organizes ecological restoration projects on lands across New Mexico. Among other duties, Kristina writes and distributes AWF’s monthly newsletter, the Pine Cone, which was first published by Aldo Leopold in 1915.

Favorite SFS Memories: There are truly too many favorite memories to recount, as every moment at the Centre for Rainforest Studies (Warrawee to us) was magical and life changing. Waking each morning to the dawn bird chorus; encountering pademelons and fireflies in the forest after dark; swimming in the volcanic crater of Lake Eacham; standing in awe at the foot of the curtain fig tree; admiring the brilliant purple and red blooming trees of the Atherton Tablelands; making up songs about bandicoots; eating fresh tropical fruit; the Halloween costume party and slip’n’slide; seeing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere; exploring the Great Barrier Reef in the company of a sea turtle and velvet-lipped giant clams; spending time with an aboriginal community near Chillagoe; planting trees to restore a section of rainforest with T.R.E.A.T. It was the experience of a lifetime, and I remain close with quite a few members of my class.

When we presented the findings of our directed research projects at the end of the semester, it seemed like the whole community turned out to attend, and we realized that we had become so embedded in this community over the course of the semester that we knew and cared about all of them. I left my time at the School for Field Studies fired up to pursue a career in public service and ecological restoration, and that semester was foundational for so much of what I continue to do today.