Teresa Mourad is the ESA Director of Education and Diversity Programs. Teresa has more than 15 years of nonprofit management experience including program development, fundraising, membership development, event planning and grants management. Most recently, she worked as Chief Operations Officer for the North American Association for Environmental Education, and was Executive Director of the Environmental Education Council of Ohio. Teresa has a strong commitment to diversity programs and has led several initiatives to increase access to environmental education resources among minority educators since 2001. She holds a BA in Sociology and a MS in Environmental Education.
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Melissa Armstrong is the Diversity Programs Manager based in Flagstaff, AZ. Melissa began working with SEEDS at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in 1999 and transferred to ESA in 2002. Ms. Armstrong received her B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Rhode Island and an M.A. in Ecology Education from Northern Arizona University. She is particularly interested in what influences students' decisions about following an ecology pathway, and how the training and reward system for ecologists can change to encourage and support greater diversity. These interests have led Melissa to promote the concept of action ecology to the ESA community, along with SEEDS students. Action ecology is ecological research that catalyzes social action to improve environmental conditions and societal welfare.
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Frederick (Fred) Abbott is ESA’s Diversity Program Coordinator. Born and raised on the island of Puerto Rico, he discovered the importance of conserving the environment at an early age, working at his parent’s SCUBA diving shop and caring for the marine life that came along with the job. He received a B.S. in Biology with a major in Wildlife Management from the University of Puerto Rico in Humacao in 2009. As an undergraduate he participated in two SEEDS Field Trips to Santa Barbara, CA (2007) and Fairbanks, AK (2008) as a member of the Eos Chapter in UPRH. He later went on to work in a marketing firm, developing campaigns focused on young adults. He also worked as a supervisor at C3TECH, a science and technology museum in Caguas, PR. These experiences have provided Fred with excellent background in large-scale program promotion and coordination, which are great assets to the ESA SEEDS team, in addition to his personal experience with SEEDS.
Email: Fred@esa.org
Celia Smith is the ESA Education Programs Coordinator. Working primarily with ESA’s EcoEd Digital Library, Celia uses her knowledge of science communication, education, and policy to manage ESA’s initiatives to support collaborative and innovative teaching and learning in ecology and beyond. Celia earned both a BA in Biology and Society (2009) and an MPA in Science and Technology Policy (2011) from Cornell University. She has strong interests in education and pedagogy, and has worked as a graduate assistant in the Cornell Center for Teaching Excellence. She has also completed science communication-related internships at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
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