Director, Colorado Global Hub, Future Earth

Josh is an ecologist, conservation biologist, and planetary health scientist with experience both in academia and in civil society.

Before joining Future Earth as the Director of the Colorado Global Hub, Josh was the Maggie and Doug Walker Endowed Professor of Natural History at the University of Washington, with appointments both in the department of Biology and the College of the Environment, where his work focused on major global change issues, including the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of landscape connectivity to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of species loss on ecosystem function.

In addition to his decade+ of academic work, which has been published in top journals, Josh also served as the founding director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute, a global research center based in Switzerland focused on the co-creation of multi-disciplinary research. As director, Josh launched over a dozen research projects, including work on the Food-Energy-Water nexus in South-East Asia, Development corridors in East Africa, global mapping of threats to biodiversity, and the development of regionally-appropriate low-carbon sustainability targets for urban areas.