For the last eight and a half years, Alex has been working for Presidio Trust, the national park in San Francisco adjacent to the Golden Gate Bridge. Formerly a volunteer coordinator, for last six years Alex has been a reforestation technician managing the replanting of the 300-acre historic forest of mostly Monterey pines/cypress and eucalyptus within the park.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in finance and an MBA, his route to forestry has been a winding one. It was through volunteering that he ended up at Presidio Trust, and he hasn’t looked back. Trading in a suit for Carhartts, he is now fully immersed in the worlds of forestry, restoration ecology, ethnobotany, and horticulture. He might have taken Thoreau a bit literally when going to the woods with the wish to live deliberately, but it has allowed him to directly address one of the problems he sees in the world.