Alumni Stories: Jon Kohl '92

Jon Kohl's Journey

As a program director in Guatemala for a small US-based conservation organization, RARE Center for Tropical Conservation, sometimes I feel like a conservation astronaut, stationed in a foreign land, linked electronically into my mission control, some 2500 miles away. I have managed a galaxy of projects since I began my missions with RARE Center, five years ago, such as bilingual nature guide training, trail development, and most of all, my own small patch of the universe: Public Use Planning Program.

I arrived here by way of a multi-staged rocket. In June 1992 with graduation on the horizon, I solicited Peace Corps and adventured along other orbits around the theme of mass environmental communications. My first summer, I worked as a day camp instructor at a Massachusetts wildlife sanctuary. Soon after, I began as an exhibition researcher for the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition, Ocean Planet. After eight months, the Peace Corps launched me to Costa Rica where I became an educator at the National Zoo. After doing interpretive programs from inside the lion’s cage, it became didactically clear that I needed to pursue environmental education and international development in a much more concerted way. Thus, from the heart of Costa Rica I applied and was accepted to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

I hooked RARE Center, in part, because I had met my current boss at a conference the year before. Networking was really important! If you want a job in this field, especially internationally, you need to network and get some experience! Make contacts at conferences, information interviews, through the alumni network and by volunteering and joining the Peace Corps. It is very hard in this field to get a job out of empty space!

Here I revolve in cycles of work. During program implementations, I suffer from immense work pressure. During down periods, I float effortlessly writing manuals and doing follow up. Such is the life of an international NGO program manager, an independent conservation astronaut serving humanity and nature.

Story by Jon Kohl '92