Jennifer is the Conservation Coordinator for the State Botanical Garden of Georgia and State Coordinator for the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance. A grant provided by the Riverview Foundation allowed SGI and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia to create a position for a grasslands coordinator in Georgia and surrounding states. Jennifer, the co-supervisor of the Georgia coordinator, is well suited for the role. Jennifer’s expertise is in working to protect imperiled plant species through a number of different recovery actions and her passion and skill in networking and assembling expert teams for conservation projects is extraordinary.

Alan Weakley, is widely regarded as one of the leading botanists and plant community ecologists in the eastern U.S. with extensive on-the-ground experience in all Southeastern states. He holds a B.S. degree in botany from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in botany from Duke University. He currently serves as Director of the Herbarium at the North Carolina Botanical Garden and adjunct professor at UNC. In his 40-year career, he has served as Senior Regional Ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and Chief Ecologist for NatureServe. He served as Trustee of the N.C. Natural Heritage Trust Fund from 2008-2013 and Chair of the N.C. Plant Conservation Program’s Scientific Advisory Committee. He is the author of Flora of the Southern & Mid-Atlantic States, a botanical manual covering about 7000 plant species, now the standard in use across much of the southeastern U.S., and has been a leader in the development of the U.S. National Vegetation Classification System.