Meet The Team

Heidi Kretser

Heidi Kretser is the Director of Rights + Communities for the Global Conservation Program, the lead of the WCS Social Safeguards Management Team, the Chair of the WCS Institutional Review Board and serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources & the Environment where she’s affiliated with the Center for Conservation Social Sciences.

For over 30 years, Heidi has worked to improve the conservation of wildlife and wild lands by incorporating tools and perspectives from the social sciences into applied conservation research, planning, practice, and decision-making. In her current role, she provides oversight to WCS’s portfolio of country programs involving or affecting Indigenous People and Local Communities and providing training and development for teams implementing a gender-inclusive human rights-based approach to conservation and safeguards practices in the field. She completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University and holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry.