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Jean Brennan
Senior Climate Change Scientist
Areas of Expertise: Climate change, adaptation and biodiversity conservation, forestry, natural resource management, international development
Dr. Brennan is the Senior Climate Change Scientist at Defenders of Wildlife. Her work focuses on the research and management approaches to help address the impacts of climate change on wildlife and natural ecosystems. She is an experienced population biologist and has conducted research on primates and small carnivores in Kenya and Madagascar, Asian elephants and other endangered large mammals on Peninsula Malaysia, and orangutans and proboscis monkeys on Borneo, Indonesia. She holds a doctorate from the University of Tennessee in population biology and ecology, and two Masters Degrees: one in Forest Science from Yale University and a second Masters of Science in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Prior to joining Defenders Climate Department Jean worked as a Senior Conservation Science Advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Her work involved helping to design environmental programs to help conserve the biodiversity and natural resource management in many developing countries. She has also worked as a Science Officer for the U.S. Department of State, Office of Global Change. As a member of the Foreign Diplomatic Corps, Jean served as a member of the U.S. Delegation at international negotiations under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Brennan was recognized by, and shares, the 2007 Nobel Peach Prize for her "substantial contribution to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC."
Dr. Brennan has taught Air Resource Management at the University of California at Davis and Conservation Biology at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies and is the author of Reducing the Impact of Global Warming on Wildlife.
