Working to create a planet where wild places, wildlife, and people thrive together

Nicole Rom, Bates College Class of ’00, executive director of the Conservation Alliance, recalled a seminal Bates moment that helped to inspire her career: the 1998 Otis Lecture by Terry Tempest Williams, an American author, educator, conservationist, and activist. “I remember specifically her talk that she gave at the school, connected all of the courses that I was taking at the time, and helped me really realize that I could choose environmental studies as a major and as a career path. And it wasn’t just something I could enjoy reading or doing on the side, that it actually could go from passion and interest to career.”