Susi joined the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition in September 2021. She was born and raised on a family farm in southwest Kansas and has always had a strong connection to the natural world.  In 2014, Susi earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Wichita State University. After graduating from WSU, she joined the Peace Corps and served in Senegal, West Africa as an urban agriculture extension agent. There, she worked with her Senegalese counterparts to evaluate, recommend, and implement practices that locals could use to help increase the production of their crops, gardens, and tree nurseries.

After returning from the Peace Corps, she earned her master’s degree in horticulture and natural resources with an emphasis in park management and wildlife conservation from Kansas State University in 2017. For her thesis, she studied the impacts of equestrian recreationists on natural and social resources at Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri, which is managed by the National Park Service. The data collected at the park was instrumental in the NPS’s development of their Roads and Trails Management Plan and subsequent Environmental Assessment.  Following her MS, she was a naturalist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. There, she assisted with the management of the animal collection and worked closely with biologists, park rangers, natural resource officers and other non-agency law enforcement personnel with wildlife and vegetation studies, wildlife capture and restraint, and violation investigations.

Most recently prior to her time with ENLC, Susi was a zookeeper and conservation specialist for Sunset Zoo, an AZA-accredited facility, in Manhattan, KS. There, she continued working with biologists on various wildlife studies, including the DoD PARC Snake Fungal Disease nationwide survey, as well as the Black-Footed Ferret Survey with the USFWS at their release site in Logan County, Kansas, to name a few. She also developed a manual explaining the importance of and how to do small-scale restorative landscaping in northeastern Kansas. As a part of these efforts, she created a list of native plants and trees typically found at nearby native nurseries and the conditions in which they will have the best chance of success. Additionally, she led the pollinator conservation program at Sunset Zoo, where she worked with pillars in the community, including the city planner, the Riley County extension master gardeners, and KACEE (Kansas Association of Conservation and Environmental Education) board members to implement restorative, native landscaping within the community. She is excited to bring all these experiences and her passion for wildlife ecology together for the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition.