Dr. Trainor is the Landscape Ecologist for The Nature Conservancy’s Africa Program. She leads complex conservation planning analysis (in Zambia, Kenya, Gabon, and Angola) and provides team members and partners across Africa with analytical support for spatial analysis and modeling.  Dr. Trainor also has adjunct faculty status with the Biology Department at the University of Cincinnati.

She has over 25 years of experience using state-of-the-art ecological modeling tools and analytical methods to extract ecologically relevant insights from large and complex geospatial data sets (e.g., species observations, climate, and remotely sensed data). Dr. Trainor’s research interests across three distinct biological science disciplines (population ecology, wildlife conservation, and landscape ecology) have allowed her to integrate biological realism, landscape features, and human-influenced geographic processes into conservation practice. These insights have allowed her to develop robust and meaningful models that support regional conservation decision-making and actions on dynamic landscapes. This work has resulted in over 25 peer-reviewed publications in the scientific literature.

Dr. Trainor was a NatureNet Science Fellow at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, an M.S. in Wildlife Management and Conservation from Colorado State University, and a B.S. in Ecology from the University of New Hampshire.