Sunnye has committed the last 20 years to environmental education with an emphasis in marine science. She received her B.S. in Environmental Earth Resources from Texas Christian University and her M.S. in Ecological Teaching and Learning from Lesley University and the Audubon Expedition Institute. She founded and managed a small business called Wormjava: “A kick in the pants for your plants” TM that focused on the harvest, bottle and sale of liquid worm castings as a natural soil amendment.
She is passionate about incorporating ecological teaching & learning, systems thinking, inquiry, and indigenous and place-based approaches to building environmental education programs. During her seven years at the New England Aquarium in Boston, MA, she served as a program educator, outreach coordinator, climate change grant coordinator, lectures coordinator, and youth programs adviser. Her most recent education consulting in Southern Africa involved working with staff and program development at The Save Our Seas Foundation, Lapalala Wilderness School, and Mariri Education Center.
Her work, teaching and travel endeavors have taken her to the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Dominica, British Columbia, Jamaica, Turks & Caicos, Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, and Galápagos. One of the most life-changing experiences was an internship with the Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas that focused on sustainable food systems for island nations—namely, aquaponics, which is a closed loop system combining the aquaculture of tilapia and the hydroponic growth of produce.
Sunnye is a travel, nature and science blogger/writer. Journaling ferociously since the tender age of 10, she has far surpassed the 10,000 hour markto nurturing her expertise in writing and editing. Sunnye claims the art and torture of writing as her lasting passion. She loves etymology and the constant practice of reaching towards grammatical perfection. Therefore, she ain’t such a bad editor either.
Whenever she needs an ego-reduction or mild mental beating, she moonlights as a trail runner with her dogs, Hugo and Blue. Whenever she feels the immediate need to make a positive difference in the short term, she makes pizza or weeds her garden. The podcasts she consumes are legion.