Nina is a second year Master of Environmental Management candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment, focusing on community-based environmental management and international development. She spent her childhood following her parents across Asia and Latin America, and after graduating from Kenyon College she immediately returned abroad to spend three years working with several conservation projects in Madagascar. Managing a small mangrove conservation NGO in Madagascar’s arid southwest and working closely with a local association sparked her interest in community-based management. This summer, Nina is in the field in northeastern Gabon, using participatory approaches to investigate how communities’ interactions with the forest are influenced by factors such as market access, national parks, and logging concessions.