Laura is the Business Manager for Birds of the World. She is a keen birder and has devoted her life and work to birds and nature conservation. After completing her Masters degree in Aquatic Ecology at Kent State University, she developed a broad background in citizen science, business, marketing, and communications in the nature and travel industry. She led two large citizen science projects, including Project Feederwatch, in the early 2000s. After that, she built a freelance marketing business that served a broad array of conservation nonprofits and travel companies. She began travel writing in 2008 and had the pleasure of watching birds and meeting birders in more than a dozen countries – she published in magazines and on her own birding travel website that described the world’s best birding travel hotspots. She returned ‘home’ to the Cornell Lab in 2018 to again serve bird conservation by bringing Birds of the World to a growing network of scientists, birders, nonprofits, and academic libraries around the world. Laura focuses most of her free time at home watching birds and “rewilding” her land back to nature.