Nathalie Martin

Nathalie is originally from Texas but graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2017. Since, she has worked as a consulting botanist on various projects since then and now works with the Norris Center examining Randy Morgan’s historic nature documentation. She previously worked as an environmental educator at Wilderness Orientation to help engage incoming undergraduates with their natural environment. She felt it was really important to work for the program after it helped her connect with nature during her first year in Santa Cruz.

Nathalie also participated in several internships while at UC Santa Cruz. One of the internships was with Alex Jones at the Campus Natural Reserve, which eventually evolved into a senior thesis project which led to her publishing a book about the plants around UCSC. Nathalie feels Alex Jones was a great mentor and was able to pass on his passion of plants to her. Aside from Alex Jones, Nathalie Martin also received a great deal of mentorship support from Chris Lay, who also helped her get more excited about being a naturalist during the naturalist field quarter. Brett Hall also helped her learn her plants while she was employed at the UCSC Arboretum. Through all her work at UC Santa Cruz she identified some of her favorite plants were from the Calochortus genus.

Nathalie believes a naturalist can be broadly defined as a state of mind. It is when you are being curious and thus observing and questioning your surroundings. Naturalist can be from anywhere, from a bustling city to the far reaches to the backcountry. Being a naturalist goes beyond knowing the just the name – it is about having a connection to or understanding a place or being. Nathalie believes we could improve outreach and diversity within the naturalist community by providing more context about the land we inhabit and explore and recognize the wealth of indigenous knowledge that came before us.