Dr. Sarah Otterstrom

Executive Director
Paso Pacifico

Sarah is a cultural and forest ecologist focused on catalyzing community-led conservation in overlooked biodiversity hotspots. She firmly believes that human dignity and agency are prerequisites for saving nature. Sarah serves as executive director at Paso Pacifico, an organization she founded in 2005. The organization supports community and landowner efforts to build localized wildlife corridors across the human-populated landscapes of western Mesoamerica. Sarah is a social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow. She and her team are currently building a digital platform to engage youth in cocreating forests with small-scale and indigenous farmers, reviving economies and slowing climate change.