Christina is passionate about building and sustaining community. At IslandWood, she is known for her joyful and energetic instructional style with her students. Working with local and regional stakeholders and community partners, she leads with caring candor in all creative pursuits. According to her co-workers and friends, she has “big Leslie Knope energy.”

As our Senior Naturalist, she strives to facilitate experiences that drive connection between people and place and make natural history accessible, lively and intriguing to all who wish to study it. As a civic ecologist, she is a student and participant in conservation work, community science projects, and stewardship events.

She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Zoology and has spent over twenty years as an outdoor educator and teaching naturalist in the eastern hardwood forests of New York, the piedmont in South Carolina, coastal Georgia, the saltmarsh and barrier islands in Florida and of course, our mossy temperate rainforest in Washington State.

Christina currently serves as a curator for the Bainbridge Island Biodiversity Project on INaturalist, a wetland monitor for WA Dept. of Fish in Wildlife in amphibian egg mass monitoring, a lead facilitator in FrogWatch USA since 2004, and a Conservation Steward & Wildlife Consultant for the Bainbridge Island Land Trust since 2006. She holds certifications as a Master Birder (Seattle Audubon) since 2011, certified Beach Naturalist (WSU) since 2014, and Certified Interpretative Guide with the National Association of Interpretation since 2015. In 2024, she completed her Master Naturalist certification with Washington State University.

When Christina isn’t teaching on the trails or planning community events, you can find her hiking in the Olympic mountains with her husband, running a trivia team, and delighting in being a mom to her three kiddos.

Favorite SFS Memory: I was 17 years old when I headed out for my SFS Adventure. We didn’t have a lot of money, and my grandmother paid for the trip. It changed my life! I was interested in the natural sciences already, but being around all the college-aged students gave me insight and new perspectives into careers and areas of study. Before the SFS program, I had only been to Florida and New Jersey! My favorite SFS memory of all was just how I felt being there, growing up in Yungaburra, and feeling supported as a scientist and young woman. The field trips to the outback and the Great Barrier Reef left a lasting impression of environments and cultures I had only seen on television or in books before. It was, as they say, the right place, at the right time.