President:

Caroline Garcia

Caroline Garcia is a wildlife biologist for ECORP Consulting, Inc. She studied at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she earned a B.S. in Integrative Biology and minor in Animal Sciences with a pre-veterinary course track. She also studied geographic information systems at San Diego Mesa College. Her experience includes field surveys, biological monitoring, and technical report preparation for terrestrial biological resources in southern California. Her favorite part of her job is assisting with special-status species surveys for coastal California gnatcatcher, light-footed Ridgway’s rail, desert tortoise, Quino checkerspot butterfly, and small mammals such as Mohave ground squirrel, San Bernardino kangaroo rat, Los Angeles pocket mouse, and Palm Springs pocket mouse and leading surveys for arroyo toad, burrowing owl, least Bell’s vireo, western snowy plover, and California least tern. She currently also serves as one of the social media communications committee chairs sharing Chapter happenings and news on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Her love of wildlife comes from her original career path in veterinary medicine – an itch she still scratches by volunteering with wildlife rehabilitation organizations. Caroline has been involved with the Southern California Chapter for 7+ years. She resides in San Diego with her husband and two cats.

Contact: president@tws-socal.org

President-Elect:

Vacant

The President-Elect shall assume the duties of the President in the absence or upon the inability of the President to serve and shall perform the duties assigned by the President. In the event the President-Elect cannot serve in the President’s absence, the Board shall appoint a President, pro tempore. The President-Elect shall be prepared to attend the annual Western Section meeting, Chapter Business meeting, Chapter Board Budgeting meeting, and participate in at least 75% of the Chapter Board meetings (Article VII, Section 1, Clause D). The President-Elect must be a member in good standing with The Wildlife Society (main/international level), the Western Section, and the local
Southern California Chapter. The President-Elect will be responsible for heading the election committee and the audit committee (when mobilized). Responsibilities for this minimally include: recruitment of an election committee, recruitment of potential candidates, and management of the election balloting and count. The President-Elect shall succeed the President the following year for a one-year term. This position is a voting member of the Board.

Interested in running for the position of President-Elect?

Please contact Caroline Garcia at president@tws-socal.org

Past-President:

Kim Klementowski

Kim Klementowski is the Immediate Past-President for the Southern California Chapter. She is the Orange/Riverside Counties Regional Preserve Manager with the Center for Natural Lands Management, where she manages preserves set aside for threatened and endangered species. Her work focuses on all aspects of conservation lands management, including weed control and habitat enhancement, surveys and population trends, and long-term vegetation monitoring, with emphasis on coastal California gnatcatcher, vernal pools and fairy shrimp, and burrowing owl. After earning her master’s degree in Geography from CSU, Chico, Kim worked in various positions in the Lassen foothills, the Sonoran Desert, and San Clemente Island, before landing back in SoCal where she grew up. When not working, she can be found rock climbing in the desert, snowboarding in the Sierras, or tearing apart her house for another DIY project. She lives in Homeland with her “kids”, Jojin and Dalea.

Contact: pastpresident@tws-socal.org

Member-At-Large:

Monica Stupaczuk

Monica Stupaczuk is an Environmental Scientist for California State Parks, where she has worked for the past 8 years on biological review, surveys, report writing, permitting, and monitoring for projects all across Southern California, but will be transitioning soon to management of natural resources in parks within the San Diego region. She earned her B.S. in Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology from the University of California, Davis. Previously she has worked on mark-recapture of giant kangaroo rats and San Joaquin antelope squirrels in the Carrizo Plain, pitfall trapping and camera trapping in the Santa Monica Mountains, monitoring breeding piping plovers at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland, and monitoring breeding California least terns and western snowy plovers at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

Contact: memberatlarge@tws-socal.org

Treasurer:

Brian Parker

Brian Parker serves as the Treasurer for the Southern California Chapter. He has also been the Chapter’s professional development chair since 2016, coordinating the educational and training workshops for the Chapter. He has an undergraduate degree in biology from UC San Diego, a master’s in ecology from UCLA, and an MBA from UC Davis. He has been a biologist in Southern California since 2001, and currently works at Busby Biological Services, Inc. He holds a federal recovery permit to survey for coastal California gnatcatcher and Quino checkerspot butterfly, and also regularly conducts surveys for arroyo toad, burrowing owl, flat-tailed horned lizard, and other plant and animal species. Most of his work focuses on city and county infrastructure projects.

Contact: treasurer@tws-socal.org

Chapter Representative to the Western Section:

Wendy Loeffler

Wendy Loeffler serves as Chapter Representative to the Western Section. She has been involved with the local Southern California Chapter for 15-20 years and have worn many hats over the years, including membership chair, newsletter coordinator, and spent a number of years as the Southern California Chapter President. She currently volunteers at the Western Section level as part of the annual conference Breakfast Roundtable committee and serve as an ombuds. Personally, she is an alumnus of CSU, Fullerton and holds both a BA and MA in Biology. She is currently a senior biologist/environmental program manager with RECON Environmental in San Diego. She has been with RECON for 28 years. She has many hours of field experience, mainly wildlife, and hold permits to survey for a number of federally and state listed species, Quino checkerspot butterfly, coastal California gnatcatcher, fairy shrimp, and Crotch’s bumble bee. While she is still able to get out in the field on occasion, she spends more time managing projects these days along with wrangling a teenager at home.

Contact: wsrep@tws-socal.org

Secretary:

Olivia Koziel

Olivia Koziel is the Secretary for the Southern California Chapter. She is an avian-inclined biologist born and raised in southern California and is currently working as a wildlife biologist for Dudek. She studied at the University of California, San Diego where she earned a B.S. in Environmental Systems with a focus on Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, as well as a B.A. in
Dance. Through her career thus far in the environmental field, she has become experienced in identification of flora and fauna of southern and central California, as well as conducting various
avian surveys, blunt-nosed leopard lizard surveys, rare plant surveys, vegetation mapping, construction monitoring, and biological report writing. Olivia has been involved with the Southern California Chapter for several years, a journey which started when she received a grant from the Chapter to attend The Wildlife Society Western Section conference as a college student. She served as Member-At-Large in 2022 and has been a County Co-Coordinator since 2023. On weekends, Olivia often assumes her alter ego can be found teaching dance classes in La Jolla. Besides birding and exploring, Olivia loves contemporary dance, ballet, art, gardening, and her awesome cat.

Contact: secretary@tws-socal.org

Appointed Positions

Professional Development Committee: Brock Ortega, Steve Ritt, W. Ryan Hilgris, Georgina Martinez, & Shana Carey

Membership and Newsletter Committee: Wendy Loeffler & Monica Stupaczuk 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee: Anna Cassady

San Diego County Coordinator – Olivia Koziel

LA County Coordinator – Georgina Martinez

Orange County Coordinator – Leslie Rivas

Riverside/San Bernardino (Inland Empire) County Coordinator – Luz Badillo

Imperial County Coordinator – Rachel Noriega

Social Media Outreach – Caroline Garcia