Alison Young

Alison Young is the Co-Director for the Thriving California Initiative, and also the co-director for the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences. She works to build partnerships and community around nature and sharing knowledge about biodiversity, as well as co-leads the annual City Nature Challenge, one of the largest community science events in the world, collaborating with people around the globe to document biodiversity in and around urban areas. She also helps run Snapshot Cal Coast, a yearly campaign to engage the public in documenting species along the California coastline to inform science and management. Her background is in marine biology, and when she's not in the tidepools for work, she can often be found in the tidepools for fun, photographing nudibranchs, which she then over-shares on social media.