EcoStrategist

There is something I have been thinking about for a while. In conservation, we invest heavily in technical expertise. We train people to understand biodiversity, restoration, carbon, community development, safeguards, monitoring frameworks, and increasingly complex standards. And we should, but somewhere along the way, many of our best technical experts become managers. And that is where things get interesting. One day, you are valued because you are excellent at your technical work. Then suddenly, your job changes. You are no longer responsible only for solving technical problems. You are responsible for people. You need to motivate teams, manage conflict, delegate, give difficult feedback, navigate budgets, build trust with communities, manage donor expectations, and make decisions with incomplete information. The technical expertise that made you successful is suddenly only part of the job. Yet we often behave as if leadership will simply appear. As if being a brilliant conservation...

 As many of you already know, this blog has always been my space to think out loud, a place for ideas, learnings, the things that stick with me long after they happen. Today's post is more personal than usual, and harder to write. Last week my son was diagnosed with leishmaniasis, and the days that followed taught me more about our public health system than I ever wanted to learn. For those who don't know it, leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease spread by the bite of a tiny sandfly. It's not rare here,   Ecuador has reported it for years, mostly in cases quietly absorbed by public hospitals and rarely discussed anywhere else. The World Health Organization classifies it as a “neglected tropical disease,” a category that exists specifically for illnesses that strike the world's poorest communities and never quite make it onto anyone's priority list. Somewhere between 700,000 and a million new cases appear worldwide every year, and most of them, like ours, happen far...