Erin Rupp Email and Phone Number

Erin Rupp has been an informal science educator for her adult life and a beekeeper for the past ten years. She founded Pollinate Minnesota in January 2015, to connect students and teachers of all ages to live honey bees and to the science, policy and media story of pollinator decline.She loves experiential inquiry education, the Midwest, insects, fresh tomatoes, and pear honey. She also loves how the seemingly tiny work bees and other pollinators do connects directly to our role in -and impact on- ecosystems. This connection is discoverable and understandable by second graders and State Representatives alike.While incubating the programming that is now Pollinate Minnesota within the Minneapolis beekeeping business, The Beez Kneez, for three years, Erin experienced, along with two other beekeepers, an acute pesticide kill of one of her Beez Kneez hives. She and others mobilized out of that experience, and in 2014, helped to get two nationally unprecedented pollinator protection laws passed in Minnesota. Pollinate Minnesota continues this focus on pollinator advocacy, and Erin works with local municipalities, and our state and region to become pollinator friendly. She spearheaded this work with Minneapolis and St. Paul. She also consults with communities nationally.Erin's a graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul and grew up in Marshfield, Wisconsin. She serves on Governor Dayton’s Committee for Pollinator Protection.