TEDxNational Conservation Training Center

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Douglas Brinkley

  American Historian, Author, and Professor

  Douglas Brinkley is a bestselling historian known for The Wilderness Warrior, his acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt and his groundbreaking environmental legacy. Brinkley details how Roosevelt, a passionate naturalist, launched America's conservation movement—creating national wildlife refuges, bird sanctuaries, and parks that shaped modern environmental policy. Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University. He is a frequent contributor to CNN, CBS, and MSNBC as a Presidential Historian and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates and written multiple New York Times bestsellers. His work includes The Great Deluge, Cronkite, and The Reagan Diaries. A Grammy winner and official U.S. Presidential Historian for the New-York Historical Society, he also serves on numerous boards and councils. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.

• Kimberly Fraser

  Education and Outreach Specialist

  Kimberly Fraser is the Outreach Specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado. She has been part of the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program since 2009, focusing on building and supporting partnerships with state, federal, tribal, NGO, and private landowners involved in the species' recovery. Kimberly also leads public outreach efforts through social media and educational programs. In addition, she serves as the Black-Footed Ferret Program Coordinator at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, home to the Recovery Program’s education ferrets and one of the premier live black-footed ferret exhibits in the country. Deeply passionate about wildlife conservation, Kimberly is dedicated to helping save one of North America’s most endangered mammals.

• Tina Morris

  Wildlife Biologist and Author

  Raised in a large family surrounded by orphaned animals, Tina Morris developed a deep love for wildlife early on. After a rocky start with science in college, she found her path in ornithology, earning degrees from Oberlin and Cornell. She helped pioneer the first techniques for reintroducing Bald Eagles into the wild—work that became the model for restoration programs across the eastern U.S. In her book, Morris recounts her role as one of the first women to lead a raptor reintroduction effort. At Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in 1975, she raised and released eaglets into the skies of New York. Her work, marked by grit, improvisation, and purpose, became a turning point in eagle conservation and her own self-discovery. Tina was formally inducted as an honorary Iroquois into the Confederacy of Six Nations for restoring eagles to their ancestral skies. Tina’s story is a testament to how personal resilience can help revive species on the brink—and restore hope for the planet.