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Matt Ellsworth

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You'll find the Flinn Scholars community in every nook and cranny of the Internet.

For starters, visit the Flinn Foundation page on Facebook, follow @flinnscholars on Twitter, and--if you're a Scholar yourself--join the Scholars group on LinkedIn.

Want a quick answer to a burning question? You can reach me via email at mellsworth@flinn.org.

And who is this writing, anyway?

Since 2007, I've been a part of the Flinn Foundation's communications team, writing about all of the Foundation's initiatives, including the Flinn Scholars.

I'm also a Flinn Scholar alum myself, from the class of 1993. After my undergraduate years in Arizona, I completed an MFA in creative writing at George Mason University in Virginia. Now and then, I do type things not entirely true.

Jan 28, 2009
Matt_badge-author Matt Ellsworth

She's baaaack...

Tags: 90, ecology, ruth allard

Florida sea turtle

It was about 15 years ago, and we hadn't figured out yet exactly what we could make of the Flinn Scholarship's travel component.

Then--if these distant memories are accurate--we saw Ruth Allard's ('90) slideshow from her trip to Costa Rica, where she'd done some conservation work for a summer. (Or maybe she'd been gone a whole year? Whichever.)

In a matter of minutes, all kinds of things opened up for us: Where Flinn travel might lead, what we might do, how it might impact our future...

In Ruth's case, that ultimately meant a master's degree in Environmental Management from Duke, where she studied the impacts of coastal restoration on sea-turtle nesting, then a 10-year stint at the Association of Zoos & Aquariums in Maryland.

After all that time, now Ruth is now back in Arizona. In October, she joined the staff of the Phoenix Zoo, where she serves as its executive vice president of conservation & education. Sounds like just the right place to land, we think, for somebody so good at inspiring the young'uns...

Photo by Flickr user mmahaffie. Used under a Creative Commons license