I was born in South Africa and completed my Honours degree in Nature Conservation at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, having spent a year working in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park as a requirement for my degree. I then went on to a Masters degree at the Tshwane University of Technology under Dr Paul Funston, where I looked at the relationships between the five larger carnivores of Africa and their prey in closed systems, and the influence management decisions have on these relationships. In 2005 I joined the Kalahari Meerkat Project for a year, running their Earthwatch programme and assisting with meerkat captures and biological sampling. I then moved with my husband Chris Gordon to Borneo, Indonesia, where we worked for The Nature Conservancy designing rapid survey techniques for estimating mammal diversity and relative abundance in logging concessions. The technique we developed forms part of the forestry certification process and aims to encourage sustainable logging in these areas. In 2007 we joined the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, where our work was primarily focused on mitigating conflict situations between farmers and cheetahs, as well as co-ordinating and focusing cheetah conservation efforts worldwide by running international conservation courses at CCF. We also executed an intensive release programme for a number of CCF’s captive raised cheetahs into a large reserve in the south of the country. I joined WildCRU in 2009 as Field Director for the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme. We live in the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia