Alumni Spotlight: Martin Mendez (’10PhD, Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology)

June 18, 2025

What is your current role?
Director, Southern Cone & Patagonia, Wildlife Conservation Society

What are you working on now?
Together with my teams in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay), we are working with local governments, partner NGOs, and local communities to create and expand protected areas in places of unique biodiversity importance. We also aim to develop sustainable livelihoods with local communities outside protected areas. A few examples include a bi-national effort to conserve amazing riverine habitats in the Uruguay River shared by Argentina and Uruguay and efforts to secure a key area on the steppes of northern Patagonia in Argentina, the spectacular El Chaco Biosphere Reserve in northern Paraguay, or unique Mediterranean forests in central Chile. We also work with governments, other NGOs, academia, and local communities to protect wildlife and to decrease some of the most pervasive threats they face. For example, we are partnering with local herders throughout Patagonia to ensure their sheep and goat fiber production is friendly to wildlife and their habitats, and to help capture carbon in order to help fight climate change. Finally, we seek to help build local capacity at different levels, from providing training to local park rangers and facilitating multi-national ranger exchanges, to helping develop and support the first master’s program in Conservation Science at Argentina's largest university, the University of Buenos Aires.

What drew you to your field?
I have always been drawn to nature, and by mid-high school I became increasingly aware of the need to engage in environmental conservation. I had also started to travel on my own with friends and spent every summer for about a decade hiking around Patagonia in my native Argentina, both marveling about unique landscapes and increasingly committed to becoming involved in its preservation. It is in this context that I decided to study Biological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires to then pursue graduate studies in conservation abroad, at Columbia.

What lessons from graduate school have you found useful in your professional life?
Graduate school provided me with the ideal context in which to dive as deep as possible into areas of intellectual interest. Incredibly rich academic resources were combined with practitioners, faculty members, and colleagues at the top of their field. Equally important, it offered me the chance to become part of a global community made up of a rich suite of cultures, backgrounds, life views, and motivations. Yet, with all these resources, I quickly understood that I needed to take ALL the initiative to learn, develop myself, develop relationships, and engage in interesting activities. This is something that I have carried with me since my years at grad school.

What skill has unexpectedly helped you in your career?
With all the invaluable resources and opportunities at hand at Columbia, it became very clear that the most invaluable element in this learning journey was time—the time you can invest immersing yourself into issues, topics, and disciplines, and developing working relationships. So I learned to strategically use and reserve chunks of time for my areas and activities of highest interest, to do my best at growing academically and professionally.

What is your favorite memory from your graduate years?
I remember very vividly the weeks when I wrote my doctoral thesis, mostly at the library in Avery Hall. Being able to focus 100% of my attention to one of my favorite areas of work, and taking the time to try to clearly communicate that work, was very engaging and rewarding. And doing so in such a beautiful space and under that atmosphere was fantastic.

What are your passions outside of your work
I love spending time outdoors, mostly biking and hiking, and I am very passionate about football (I guess I could call it soccer for now).

What is your advice for current GSAS students?
While you might occasionally feel overwhelmed with assignments and the prospect of "finishing your studies," remember you are getting to spend most of your time and attention on something you genuinely are interested in, and keep in mind that you might well make some of your best friends while you are at it; and that, by the way, you are in an incredible city when we're all from somewhere else and we all belong here.

What is next for you, professionally or otherwise?
I look forward to continuing to devote my entire attention to getting through the current biodiversity, climate, and health crisis while we preserve and recover as much of nature as we can, while seeking to ensure sustainable livelihoods for local communities.