Lea Rekow is Deputy Director for WildEarth Guardians. She is responsible for managing the organization’s conservation and communications team leaders, and guiding collaborations between these teams and development. Lea has more than two decades experience as an Executive Director in the non-profit sector. She holds a PhD in creative strategizing to reclaim degraded space, and has a long history working in media and the arts, mostly in New York City. Prior to joining WildEarth Guardians, Lea spent many years working with marginalized communities living in environmental and human insecurity to help build capacity. These efforts included co-creating multi-scale community gardens in Brazil’s favelas, working with various Diné groups on land use reclamation issues on and around the Navajo Nation, and documenting minority struggles in conflict zones in different regions throughout the Global South. She loves to walk the land, feel the soil, travel adventurously, and help build meaningful and positive connections whenever she can.