Dr. Trish O’Kane is a senior lecturer and environmental educator at University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. As a freelance journalist working in war-torn Central America for 15 years, she witnessed horrific massacres by the military. It was only when the house she and her husband Jim bought in New Orleans was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina that a bird, a bright red male cardinal, pierced her fog of depression.

It sent her on a life-changing journey that eventually took her to Madison, Wisconsin, where she earned a PHD in Environmental Studies and became actively involved in fighting to save a unique wetland park from development. That work, and the birding outings that she led for middle school students in Madison, eventually formed the basis for her course, Birding to Change the World.