Angela Yang
Angela is a dedicated career conservationist who has worked in wildlife conservation globally for decades. She is currently the Director of International Field Conservation at the Denver Zoo but has helped the Indianapolis Zoo launch their partnership with the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN). Prior to this, she held the title of Chief Conservation Officer at Rainforest Trust where she led the conservation department in overseeing more than 150 projects to establish priority protected areas for species conservation around the world.
Before returning to the US in 2018, Angela lived in Cambodia, Kenya and the United Kingdom for a decade, working with international organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). She worked with WCS’s Field Veterinary/Global Health program for over nine years, coordinating and conducting research at the nexus of wildlife and human health. After living in Southeast Asia, Angela realized the immensity of the human pressures on natural resources and the critical need to find sustainable solutions, so she went on to complete her thesis analyzing the socioeconomic impacts of marine conservation in East Africa. She stayed on in Kenya, working with local NGOs in East Africa, assisting with strategic planning, development and capacity-building before joining ZSL to manage their programs in the Russian Far East, Indonesia and Thailand. At ZSL, Angela led the organization’s largest country program that focused on Sumatran tiger conservation in the context of green growth and public-private partnerships in Indonesia.
Angela holds a BSc. from the University of British Columbia and a MSc. From the University of Edinburgh. She is a member of the IUCN SSC Wildlife Health Specialist Group and Asian Species Action Partnership, sits on the Advisory Board of William & Mary’s Institute for Integrative Conservation, and has authored or co-authored a number of publications, including a book chapter entitled, “Bridging the Gap between Conservation and Health”. Most recently, she co-authored an editorial for the IUCN WCPA publication that examines the impacts of COVID-19 on protected and conserved areas.