Hello! My name is Elizabeth Francis,

...and I am honored and excited to be a Grossman Scholar!

As a Colorado native, I have always been passionate about the outdoors. This passion eventually led me to pursue a career in ocean and coastal management. I was fortunate to grow up with exposure to marine science, a luxury many students in land-locked states do not possess. I benefited from local nonprofits and passionate individuals willing to share their knowledge of the marine world, teaching me the importance of environmental science education in Colorado.

I went on to earn my undergraduate degree at Quest University, Canada, majoring in Marine Science and Political Science. I became increasingly frustrated with the incoherence between scientists and policymakers and decided to pursue my Master’s in International Environmental Policy at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Before pursuing my Master’s, I returned home and worked closely with local nonprofits and educational institutions on environmental stewardship and teaching students about the ocean. This experience transformed my perception of what it means to work on marine issues from a landlocked state and the importance of community engagement.

This experience led me to work with communities to pursue ocean-based solutions to climate change. During my work, I noticed a gap between on-the-ground needs and the discourse within academic literature. I decided to pursue my PhD at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and work on bridging the language gap between policy, finance, science, and social science. I hope to provide practitioners with valuable tools, resources, and knowledge to scale marine conservation efforts that include social justice and equity. We must find equitable conservation solutions that integrate the needs and desires of local communities to ensure long-term conservation success. Finding this balance is often difficult and fraught with challenges, frequently hindered by the partitioning of language between financial institutions, communities, scientists, and policymakers. In this niche, I work to disentangle the language barriers so that communities become environmental stewards with long-term economic and political support.

Thanks to the funding from the Grossman Scholarship, I am able to pursue academic interests and spend more time connecting with the community on environmental stewardship. As a working student, my primary focus is on funding my education which significantly takes away from the time I could spend at school events, volunteering in my community, and working on additional academic pursuits. Thanks to the generosity of the Grossman Scholarship, I now have the opportunity to delve into my academic career and connect my research with a wider audience. I want to thank the Grossman Scholarship for the freedom to learn with the Colorado community.