Crystal is the Director of Land & Carbon Lab at the World Resources Institute. In this role, she builds and executes strategies to harness the Earth data revolution to accelerate nature-based solutions to climate change. Crystal helped found Global Forest Watch in 2014, a powerful near-real-time forest monitoring system that creates radical transparency on what is happening in forests around the world. She works with companies, governments, and civil society organizations to use GFW’s data and tools to mobilize more effective, rights-based conservation and sustainable management of forests.

She is now building on the success of Global Forest Watch to build and deploy a breakthrough system for monitoring all the world’s land and its nature-based carbon, with the goal of providing decision-makers everywhere with the information they need to address rising competition over the world’s finite land. Crystal previously worked on strengthening forest governance Brazil, Indonesia, and Cameroon with WRI’s Institutions and Governance Program.  Prior to joining WRI, she worked in environmental consulting in Half Moon Bay, California.

Crystal holds a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems Science from Stanford University. Her research encompassed environmental governance in Uganda and conservation biology in the tropical rainforests of South America and Eastern Africa.