Verena Gill
Verena Gill grew up in the UK and had a fascination with birds from an early age due to her parents’ back garden haven for them. Despite studying American and Commonwealth Arts on a writer’s trajectory at the University of Exeter, she had an itch to conduct conservation work and explore the world. However, it wasn’t until she met John Piatt and Scott Hatch in Alaska in 1992 that her dream to work in wild places on wild things became a possibility. John and Scott took Verena under their seabird wings and introduced her to marine ecology in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Archipelago. This eventually evolved into attending graduate school at the University of Alaska working on black-legged kittiwakes with the guidance of David Duffy and Scott.
After obtaining U.S citizenship and graduating, Verena was hired by Scott in 1999 as a term wildlife biologist working on seabirds with the USGS’s Alaska Science Center. Scott and Verena had many fruitful adventures and publications from Middleton to St Matthew Island in their decade working together. With the help of some student travel grants, Verena attended her first PSG meeting in Monterey, California in 1998 and her first Waterbird Society meeting in Grado, Italy in 1999. These meetings opened a whole new world of inspiration and connections that propelled her career. In 2002 she was offered a permanent job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Marine Mammals Management which took her from birds to blubber. She stayed at USFWS until 2014 when she moved to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to be an Endangered Species Act (ESA) coordinator. However, it didn’t stop Verena from working with PSG and on seabirds and shorebirds on her own dime and time. From 2002 to 2005 she was the Alaska and Russia regional representative for PSG. In 2006 Verena was the local chair for the PSG annual meeting at the Alyeska Resort in Alaska. In fact it was at this meeting she discovered she was pregnant with her first daughter. 2006 was a busy year for Verena personally and professionally as she was also incoming PSG Chair which ended with past Chair duties in 2008. Verena was also Chair of PSG’s Craig S. Harrison PSG Conservation Fund from 2010-2023. In 2024 Verena stepped back from moderating the PSG listserver and putting out a monthly seabird publication list almost 20 years after she founded the projects.
Currently Verena is the Branch Chief for one of the NOAA Fisheries’ Protected Resources branches in Alaska where she has been since 2016. Her current focus is on all marine mammals with an emphasis on Cook Inlet belugas, North Pacific right whales, ESA recovery coordination, outreach, and citizen science. In this position she is finally able to pay it forward and mentor early-career scientists and provide opportunities for their professional development. Outside of work her hobbies are trail running, skate skiing, exploring ridgelines, and fat tire and mountain biking. When not working or recreating outside in her happy place with her family she can be found at home with her menagerie of daughters and rescue pets.
