John supports the creative design, development and day-to-day management of the monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) behind the agile implementation of several bold and ambitious strategies to end tropical deforestation by 2030, which are the focus of what is being called, Forests, People, Climate (FPC), a broader collaborative of philanthropic donors and civil society organizations, of which WRI is a partner. Within WRI, John closely collaborates with the FPC Senior Manager, the People and Forest Protection Strategy Lead, the Land & Carbon Lab’s MEL Team and the International Offices of Brazil, Africa and Indonesia.

Despite having focused predominantly on ocean and coastal issues in the Caribbean prior to joining WRI, John has broad experience monitoring and evaluating the health, management and governance of habitats and species at multiple scales by collecting and using data from a variety of sources. While with the United Nations Office for Project Services, John undertook the development of the monitoring and evaluation framework for the Caribbean and North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystems Project focused on improving ocean governance. Before that, John was an applied scientist with The Nature Conservancy, also in the Caribbean, where he worked on a range of issues including national and regional protected area system design, national marine spatial planning, online decision support system development and geospatial analyses of coastal resilience.

John has a Master's in Environmental Management from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Environmental Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. John is from and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA and enjoys traveling and outdoor adventures such as mountain biking and sailing small dinghies.