Meet Our Speakers: Gaby Gonzales-Olimón

“I was a Westie for a week,” explains Gaby Gonzalez-Olimón, Semester in the West’s Sonoran Institute host and guide while in Mexico.  Two years ago Gaby was interning as a wildlife biologist in Grand Canyon National Park when she met Semester in the West students and staff through a bison-surveying project on the North Rim.  Gaby grew up in Baja California and when the planned Spanish translator for the program’s Mexico section fell through, program director Phil Brick hired Gaby as the new translator.  Gaby drove from the Grand Canyon to Mexico to live and work with a group she had previously only known for a couple days.  Once in Mexico, Gaby interfaced with the Sonoran Institute, a nonprofit organization working in the United States and Mexico to connect communities with their natural resources and preserve wildlife and habitat.  The Colorado River Delta Program of the Sonoran Institute was so impressed by Gaby they created a new position, Environmental Education Coordinator, just for her.   Gaby develops and implements environmental education programs and community workshops on restoration in the Colorado River Delta area.  She loves to take students and kids out into nature.  Many of these kids have lived their whole lives in urban areas and are initially terrified and brought to tears by the unfamiliarity of nature.  As an honorary Westie, Gaby’s advice to Semester in the West students is to “network and keep in touch with the people you meet.”  

By Hannah Trettenero

Meet Our Speakers: Francisco Zamora

Francisco Zamora is mobilizing hope. As Director of the Sonoran Institute’s Colorado River Delta Legacy program and with around 20 years of experience working in the Mexico-United States border region, Zamora has seen massive ecological and social progress. His job requires collaboration with local leaders, businesses and government agencies to achieve one main goal: returning the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. Where once the river provided a green path of biodiversity and irrigation water through one of the hottest regions of Mexico, it has today shriveled to salty mud pits from over-allocation. 
It would seem hard to find hope in this expansive landscape of dust, but Zamora celebrates in the achievements that a community-grown, cooperative approach has yielded. He compares the Sonoran Institute’s restoration work to planting a seed, one that will empower local employees in growing the spirit of the project with their own ideas. Zamora has an equally optimistic metaphor for his relationship with big governments and agencies. Where he once had to “push the truck,” to bring attention to the Delta’s importance, he now sees such community enthusiasm that he is easily “pulling” a bandwagon of support. Facing a tumultuous political climate in the wake of the recent U.S. election, Franciso models an inspiring outlook. He is motivated in his work by “the joy of knowing that I’m doing a good thing.” 

By Signe Lindquist