Careers in Conservation with Nikhil Advani

UT alum (B.S. 2004, Ph.D. 2012) Nikhil Advani, who is currently the Senior Director for Wildlife and Climate Resilience at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington DC, will talk about how his time at UT prepared him for a career in conservation, his path to his current position and the different kinds of jobs one can pursue. There will be plenty of time available for Q&A.

Dr. Nikhil Advani’s role at WWF is at the intersection of communities, wildlife and the varied threats they face, from climate change to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently, he is leading a GEF project focused on how COVID-19 is affecting nature-based tourism in eastern and southern Africa, which seeks to connect funders to communities most affected by the crisis (African Nature-Based Tourism Platform). Other projects under Dr. Advani’s portfolio focus on better understanding how wildlife and rural communities are being affected by changes in weather and climate, and developing and implementing solutions to help them adapt. These include an initiative to gather data and implement climate adaptation projects for rural communities (WWF Climate Crowd), a Wildlife and Climate assessment series to research species vulnerability to climate change, and creation of a Wildlife Adaptation Innovation Fund to help at risk species adapt to climate change. In 2019 he was awarded the Emerging Leader Award by The College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, and currently serves on their advisory council.

Dr. Nikhil Advani was born and brought up in Kenya, and went on to pursue his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin. His thesis focused on gaining a better mechanistic understanding of species response to climate change, using the Glanville Fritillary butterfly as a model species. He then worked for the Nature Conservancy in Texas, prior to joining WWF in 2013.