Nicole Roberts MS » Team

Nicole holds a Master’s in Conservation Leadership from Colorado State University’s Human Dimensions of Natural Resources program, where her work focused on the ethical dimensions of conservation decision-making. Through her graduate research, she came to see that while conservation science can demonstrate what we can do, and social science can help illuminate what communities want us to do, neither fully addresses what we ought to do. For that, we must engage more deeply with ethics.

Nicole has worked for both state and federal wildlife management agencies, including Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where she has supported conservation planning, public and stakeholder engagement, and policy processes. Her experience includes facilitating deliberative public involvement, analyzing public input on contentious conservation issues, and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to navigate complex value-laden decisions.

Nicole is particularly interested in bringing ethics to life in wildlife management agencies through capacity building and conservation planning. Such work involves understanding the relationship between facts and values, challenging reigning normative constructs in conservation, facilitating ethics-based discussion, and nurturing internal philosophical reflection. In equipping individuals with the tools necessary to navigate the moral frontiers of conservation, Nicole draws upon her work in the social sciences to more deeply understand the experiences, needs, and barriers faced by practitioners themselves; grounding the insights in both theory and practice.

Nicole also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences with a minor in Philosophy from the University of Denver, as well as a Humane Education Practitioner Certificate from the University of Denver’s Institute for Human-Animal Connection.