laura flessner

Laura Flessner

Environmental Scientist

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy

Nominated by Dawn Wright

Laura Flessner is an environmental scientist for The Nature Conservancy, where she serves as the global oceans team’s geographic information systems manager, advancing their climate risk and resilience strategy within their coastal resilience program. Given the rise of green infrastructure, technology is becoming a vital tool to educate audiences about environmental changes in order to reach consensus on a best course of action. Laura demonstrated her knowhow as one of the main designers of the award-winning Coastal Defense app, which shows users where the greatest risk of erosion is and provides information about forces that affect habitats. Laura holds an MS in environmental science from University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she specialized in coastal management.