Alan Weakley Ph.D.

Chair of SGI's Scientific Advisory Board

Director of the Herbarium at the North Carolina Botanical Garden

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA-CHAPEL HILL

We are thrilled that Alan has joined the SGI team. In early September, we signed a memorandum of agreement with the North Carolina Botanical Garden to develop a formal partnership. Now, in addition to his primary role as Director of the Herbarium at the North Carolina Botanical Garden and adjunct professor at UNC, Alan will serve jointly with SGI as Chairman of our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).  Beginning in fall 2018, he will work to develop SGI's SAB which will include members from all 23 states of the SGI focal region. The SAB will identify and rank projects in need of urgent conservation action and/or funding and will help to administer SGI's grant program beginning in 2019.

Alan is widely regarded as one the leading botanists and plant community ecologists in the eastern U.S. with extensive on-the-ground experience in all Southeastern states. He holds a Ph.D. in botany from Duke University. In his 40-year career, he has served as Senior Regional Ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and Chief Ecologist for NatureServe. He served as Trustee of the N.C. Natural Heritage Trust Fund from 2008-2013 and Chair of the N.C. Plant Conservation Program’s Scientific Advisory Committee. He is the author of Flora of the Southern & Mid-Atlantic States, a botanical manual covering about 7000 plant species, now the standard in use across much of the southeastern U.S., and has been a leader in the development of the U.S. National Vegetation Classification System.