IAN welcomes new intern, Yesenia Valverde

Yesenia appears smiling in the middle of the image surrounded by lush green forest, including low-growing shrubs. You can see her upper body and her hands are holding a walking stick in front of her body.Originally from San Diego, California, Yesenia graduated last year from Brown University with an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. Passionate about tropical ecology, her senior thesis documented climate change impacts on a bird community in a Costa Rican cloud forest. In the past, she has also studied epiphytic plant distributions in Costa Rica, bat behavior in Panama, and ant ecology in Malaysian Borneo. Yesenia plans to pursue a PhD in conservation ecology where she hopes apply what she's learned at IAN to communicate science effectively and improve her capacity for transdisciplinary work. Her hobbies include reading, hiking, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.