Our Mission

Ryan is a Tropical Ecologist with a M.S. in Wildlife Ecology & Conservation. He first visited and fell in love with Ecuador in 2001, and has spent the past 20 years working on a variety of research and conservation projects across the country. Among his achievements are the discovery and description of numerous frog species new to science and the creation and expansion of two protected areas. His work has been featured in scientific journals and popular media outlets such as National Geographic, Mongabay, and Discovery Channel. He joined TMA in 2014 following two years working as the Ecuador Program Director for the non-profit The Biodiversity Group. Originally from California, he now lives in Quito, Ecuador with his wife and two dogs.

Isabel has been creating impact solutions for social and environmental challenges in Latin America for over 15 years. After finding an unprotected forest in coastal Ecuador in 2007, she co-founded TMA and helped to establish the Jama-Coaque Reserve and the Research Station (Casa Bamboo). She worked with women, youth and families to engage the community to protect the Pacific Equatorial Forests. In 2013, was invited to replicate this model in Venezuela at Eposak. In 2015, Isabel founded Lugar Sostenible, and is working in Sao Paulo and LATAM, designing social innovation solutions. Isabel has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and a Postgraduate degree in Social Innovation. She was born in Ecuador and now lives in Brazil, with her husband Manuel.

After studying economics at Cornell University and politics at the London School of Economics, Jerry briefly worked as an investment banker on Wall Street for one single year before relocating to South America. He then nomadically roamed the continent for several years, working as a foreign correspondent for Adbusters Magazine, among other jobs. In 2006, he laid down roots in Ecuador, where he co-founded Third Millennium Alliance and helped build the Jama-Coaque Reserve. It was here where Jerry developed a passion for cacao farming. In 2013, he co-founded To’ak Chocolate. His work has been featured in Forbes, National Geographic, Fortune Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and VICE Magazine, among others. He lives in Ecuador.

Erica is currently a doctoral researcher in Transition Design at Carnegie Mellon University. She's led an extensive career in local economic development, systems-level change facilitation, social impact investing, and leadership education. In 2015, she co-founded etsy.org and served as the Managing Director of the non-profit it incubated, Good Work Institute. Prior to that she worked in US microfinance for Kiva and Accion. Erica recently received the Humanity in Action and Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellowship. Originally from Aurora, CO, by way of Brooklyn, she now resides in Portland Oregon with her husband and son.

Matt has a deep connection to Ecuador as he resided in the Galapagos Islands from 2003-2005 and scouted the nascent Jama-Coaque Reserve with co-founder Jerry Toth in 2007. Matt's career includes over 15 years’ experience in real estate investment management with a focus on office properties across all major U.S. markets. He received a BS from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of Washington. Matt resides with his wife Kaitlyn in Seattle, WA and spends his free time exploring the Salish Sea and Cascade/Olympic Mountain Ranges.

Anjali is a chocoholic and environmentalist with extensive experience in finance and operations. Anjali founded Bernoulli Finance which helps fast-growing ecologically-minded companies use financial data for better decision making and planning. Anjali was previously Partner/CFO at Fare Resources, a collective of entrepreneurs that build food communities and CFO at Belcampo Group, a US and Latin American food production and farming company.

Anjali holds an MBA in International Business and MS in Finance from Temple University, and an M.Tech. and B.Tech. in Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. She is a native English and Hindi speaker, and has a working knowledge of Arabic and Spanish. When not creating financial solutions, Anjali is usually found traveling with her family.

Gavin is the founder and president of Unite Fitness, a studio and online fitness company and one of TMA’s business partners. Gavin holds a BS in Operations Research & Information Engineering from Cornell University and his early career started in management consulting at Deloitte and other boutique firms helping Fortune 500 companies write business plans, assess partnerships, manage projects and develop their teams. He also held marketing positions in the electronic payments industry and within his company. Originally from Philadelphia, Gavin now resides in California where he enjoys the outdoors with his partner and dog.

Betty was born in Esmeraldas and raised in the city of Quito, Ecuador, where she has extensive experience in the business services sector. After earning her degree at the Manor Junior College in Jenkintown Pennsylvania, USA, Betty went on to work for Societé Internationale de Telecomunicationes Aeronautiques and FUNDAGRO (Foundation for Agricultural Development of Ecuador), associated with USAID. In 1990, she founded the human resources staffing company Grupo CASESFAL, where she worked as General Manager and Senior Associate. In 2000, she co-founded the Ecuadorian tourism company Rainbowtours. Betty is currently the president and legal representative of TMA’s Ecuadorian branch. She lives in Quito.

Pamela was born in Guayaquil and raised in the city of Quito, Ecuador, where she has extensive experience in the art and education sectors. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts (CCA) in California and later went on to become a certified Montesorri teacher in Florida. She has spent much of the past decade working on a variety of development and creative ventures in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. She currently works for an international ethnobotanical company and serves on the board for TMA's Ecuadorian branch. She lives in Quito with her husband Ryan and their two dogs.

Dany Murillo was born and raised in the community of Camarones, which borders the Jama-Coaque Reserve. He started working with TMA as a field assistant when he was 18 years old, and during the intervening years he has grown into a key member of the organization and a leader in his community. Day in and day out, he’s the person who makes sure that the Jama-Coaque Reserve and all of its field projects run smoothly. He is also the co-architect of TMA’s Community Reforestation Program. He resides in Camarones with his wife and daughter.

Edilberto Marquez has walked all the trails of this forest long before it was called the Jama-Coaque Reserve. He was born and raised in a house in the middle of this same forest and knows the terrain better than anyone alive. He’s been working with TMA since 2012. In addition to serving as JCR’s first park ranger, he also plays an important role in our agroforestry and reforestation work. Edilberto lives in the neighboring community of Tabuga with his family and commutes to work on a motorcycle.

Sixto Lopez is from the community of Camarones. He’s been working with TMA since 2018, initially as a field assistant and now as a park ranger. He’s a soft-spoken person who is extremely reliable. He lives in Camarones with his family.

Moises Tenorio was born in the coastal city of Esmeraldas, but spent most of his childhood growing up in the capital city of Quito. He is an avid birder and rock climber, and has spent many years working as a bird guide at the El Monte Sustainable Lodge in Mindo, Ecuador. He is currently finishing up his undergraduate degree in Ecotourism at the Universidad Central in Quito, where he is creating an ecotourism development plan for the Jama-Coaque Reserve as his thesis.

As a professor of terrestrial ecology at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, Dr. McCrackend investigates the ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental change at community to ecosystem scales to develop conservation management strategies and policy. With TMA, Dr. McCracken is responsible for the Three Forests Conservation Corridor Canopy Acoustic and Imaging Project to monitor wildlife movement and inform TMA’s Community Reforestation program. He is also responsible for initiating the parabiologist program. Dr. McCracken continues to work on these projects in the Jama-Coaque Reserve and is helping to expand research in the Reserve.

Dr. David Rodriguez is a first-generation Mexican-American college graduate born and raised in Del Rio, TX, which sits along the US-Mexico border. After transferring from Southwest Texas Junior College, he received both his B.S. (2000) and M.S. (2002) degrees in Biology at Texas State University. He was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship at Texas State University and used it as a springboard to the doctoral program in Zoology at Texas Tech University to research the population genetics of crocodiles. After earning his Ph.D. (2007), Dr. Rodriguez served as the Project Director for a cooperative US Dept. of Education grant at El Centro College in Dallas that endeavored to increase minority participation in STEM fields. He was then awarded a NSF Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship to perform research on amphibian pathogens in the New World at Cornell University. In 2015, Dr. Rodriguez joined Texas State University as a faculty member in Biology where he teaches Mycology and Applied Bioinformatics and investigates host-pathogen dynamics in reptiles and amphibians using genetic, genomic, and bioinformatic tools. Specifically, he has been investigating the amphibian-killing fungus in temperate and tropical environments and Snake Fungal Disease in Texas. His research also leverages a portable genetics lab to teach and perform genetic analyses in the field. His research group has partnered with TMA to provide immersive study abroad experiences and research opportunities for students at Texas State University (a Hispanic-serving institution), and to recruit Ecuadorian students into US graduate programs.

Mike first joined TMA as a reforestation volunteer in 2012 before serving as the organization's first resident biologist. He then played a role as one of TMA's directors before beginning his PhD at Tulane University in 2018. Mike's doctoral research focuses on how birds and forests respond to environmental and anthropogenic forces in the Jama-Coaque Reserve and elsewhere in northwest Ecuador.

Becca is a conservation biologist and tropical field ecologist with an insatiable curiosity and adoration of the natural world (especially frogs). Becca has worked in the jungles of Madagascar, Peru, Honduras, the Philippines, Australia, Costa Rica, and Malaysian Borneo. She is finishing her PhD at UC Berkeley, where she studies how natural history and acoustic space influence why some species are more tolerant to disturbance than others. She has been conducting fieldwork at Jama-Coaque Reserve since 2018.

Abhimanyu is an ecologist and ornithologist with a deep interest in avian population structure and biogeography. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Evolutionary Biology and works closely with the Negaunee Integrative Research Center at The Field Museum. In 2019, Abhimanyu participated in TMA’s Ornithological Research Techniques field course, where he spent two months banding birds and collecting data for our long-term population study. For his PhD dissertation, which he is carrying out in the Jama-Coaque Reserve, Abhimanyu is using ecological and genetic techniques to analyze divergence between Andean and coastal avian populations.