Lindsay Olsen

Lindsay is a Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where her work focuses at the nexus of conservation and development. She is passionate about advocating for the needs of natural resource-dependent communities, whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by climate change, and finding human-centric solutions to ecosystem conservation. A born and bred Alaskan, Lindsay spent the first decade of her career on the back deck of a commercial salmon fishing boat in remote western Alaska, most recently as part of an all-woman crew. In 2013 she completed a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, researching knowledge-sharing networks within small-scale fishing communities in five different countries. She has since worked on climate change adaptation planning initiatives for Alaskan Native communities in the arctic, as a freelance writer, and as an experiential educator in Indonesia. She is particularly interested in the role social enterprise can play in solving environmental problems. During her time at Yale, she has assisted organizations in both Indonesia and Zambia that are using market mechanisms to provide alternative livelihoods to individuals forced into deforestation and wildlife poaching activities by poverty. She believes firmly that any tenable solution to climate change will come from a cross-cultural, collaborative, and community-based approach. She holds a B.A. in History from Williams College, where she was named a three-time NCAA champion in women’s rowing.