Mike Skuja

Location :	Chesapeake Research Consortium Office
Position :	Executive Director
Email :	skujam@chesapeake.org
Bio :	Mike Skuja is an ecologist and conservation leader who has spent more than 20 years bringing people and institutions together to tackle complex environmental challenges. His work has taken him across the world, but the Chesapeake Bay has remained an important part of his career and a place where his interests in conservation, community, and science come together. At The Pew Charitable Trusts, Mike managed coastal conservation initiatives across the Chesapeake region and helped build partnerships with federally recognized Tribes in Virginia to advance Indigenous-led conservation. He continues this work today as an advisor to the Rappahannock Tribe, supporting efforts to conserve ancestral lands, restore fisheries, and protect the Rappahannock River. Mike has seen firsthand the challenges of translating environmental science into meaningful on-the-ground action. As Executive Director of a Riverkeeper organization, he worked alongside ranchers, communities, and public agencies to address nonpoint source pollution and the pressures of development on a changing watershed as well as deepening river-based environmental education with schools. Some of his most rewarding work involved partnering with local organizations to create environmental jobs training programs for all communities, including an initiative that led to the country’s first multi-lingual stormwater murals. His interest in the relationship between people and the environment also brought him to academia, where he taught conservation, environmental justice, and political ecology at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs and the University of California-Berkeley ESPM. These experiences, spanning university classrooms, nonprofit leadership, and field conservation, have reinforced his belief that good science has its greatest impact when it is accessible, relevant, and shaped by the people and communities putting it into practice. It is a perspective he brings to his leadership of the Chesapeake Research Consortium. Mike is fluent in Spanish and holds a master's degree in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford and undergraduate degrees in Human-Environment Geography and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Growing up in Wisconsin, surrounded by lakes, rivers, and forests, helped cultivate his lifelong appreciation for the natural world. Today, he lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two children, and two cats, and enjoys kayaking and exploring the region's creeks and waterways with his family.