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We would like to extend a warm welcome and congratulations to our first ever Co-Coordinators of the Early Career Network, Ayanna St. Rose, and Daniel Pinillos.

Both bring valuable backgrounds to the ECN that will be leveraged to get the governance and structure off the ground and running. To learn more about Daniel and Ayanna, read their bios below and check out their featured scientist profile and read here. 

Daniel Pinillos:

Daniel Pinillos is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the interface of land system science, landscape ecology, and ecological economics. His background spans forestry, environmental governance, and ecology, with a PhD in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation jointly completed between Wageningen University & Research and Institut Agro Montpellier. His work focuses on understanding how ecological processes, governance systems, and economic dynamics interact across landscapes, particularly in Latin America.

Over the past two years, he served as a Science, Technology, and Policy (STeP) Fellow at the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research and is currently an affiliated researcher at the Universidad Rafael Landívar and Universidad del Valle in Guatemala. Across both research and science–policy contexts, he has worked on topics including tropical forest governance, landscape multifunctionality, environmental-economic accounting, science diplomacy, and transdisciplinary sustainability research. A central thread across his work is understanding how societies organize land use under competing ecological, social, and economic pressures, and how more integrated, context-sensitive approaches can support more equitable and sustainable futures

Ayanna St. Rose:

Dr. Ayanna St. Rose is an Ecologist specializing in forest ecosystems, disturbance dynamics, and climate resilience. Driven by her personal experience with disturbance, she dedicated herself to quantifying biodiversity and structural complexity, documenting ecological transitions, and translating complex environmental data into actionable solutions. She holds an MS in Statistics and Analytics and a PhD in biology from the University of Arkansas, where she focused on modeling forest structural complexity and its relationship with multitrophic biodiversity and ecosystem function. As a post-doc at Oregon State University, she worked alongside USFS scientists to analyze the effects of wildfire disturbances on seedling regeneration dynamics across the Pacific Northwest.

Deeply committed to equity in STEM, Ayanna bridges the gap between academic research and public interest. She is an active member of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative's translation group and a founding member of Caribbean Environmental Solutions, a non-profit focused on sustainable capacity building. Additionally, she is a mentor, one of the things she is most proud of. She recognizes the importance of building resilient mentorship networks to streamline the success of youth in science. She has guided undergraduate students across Latin America, the US, Asia, and the Caribbean, empowering them to reach their fullest potential.