“Developing a visceral, emotional relationship with another being or part of the natural world can lead to paradigm-shifting insights, and instill in us the passion to defend it, drawing on our newfound wisdom to create practical solutions to ecological crises. With deep connection, we are moved to protect what we love.”

Ever since she can remember coming into consciousness as a young child, Susan has had an acute sense of the value of each living being, and how important it is to treat all Life with respect, for our sake as well as theirs. This has guided her life’s choices and life’s work.

Susan holds a B.S. in biology from Cornell University; an M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research, and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Kentucky. She has dedicated her life to exploring creative and essential perspectives based on the natural world and human development, to help solve the major problems of our time. She combines insights from science, psychology, ecology and spirituality into an integrated whole for living sustainably, harmoniously, and joyously on our Earth. While (happily) working as a psychologist in the Colorado super maximum prison system, Susan was invited to raise 7 wolf puppies. That was the end of life as she knew it. The life-affirming emotions, profound connections and insights she had with those wolves throughout their lifetimes were the driving force behind her founding Earthfire Institute 25 years ago. She simply had to share them.

Named after one of the original 7 wolf puppies, Earthfire is a nonprofit wildlife sanctuary, rehabilitation center, and retreat destination located just west of Grand Teton National Park in Idaho, USA. Susan recently released her first book, Whispers from the Wild: An Invitation, which includes a collection of stories about living with the rescued wild animals of Earthfire. During her time spent living with bears and wolves, cougars and coyotes, badgers and buffalo over their lifetimes, Susan has seen astounding events which have opened windows into the beautifully entangled nature of Life.

Those experiences led her to pioneer Reconnection Ecology®, a framework that reawakens our deep relationship to wildlife and nature, expands our sense of community to include all living beings and moves us to protect thriving habitats for all Life. She has blended animal and human psychology into an ecopsychology and spiritual ecology perspective. A foundational component of Reconnection Ecology is encouraging and supporting transformational experiences people have had with the natural world, in order to change how we see and therefore treat wildlife and nature.

Transformation at the personal level can, over time, shift values and belief systems in societies. An effective way of accomplishing this is through story sharing circles, online and in person. Some of these will be included in her next book on Reconnection Ecology, and you are warmly invited to contact her to share your own.

Susan has taught at universities all over the world and spent eight years as Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Manitoga preserve. Her desire to broaden her own understanding by seeing through other’s eyes led her to travel to many cultures, including remote villages in Nepal, the Inuit in the Arctic, hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon, and to work with inmates in prisons such as Sing Sing and the super-maximum facility Colorado State Penitentiary. Through retreats, newsletters, speaking engagements, videos, podcasts, and social media, Susan and Earthfire Institute engage with an international audience.

In 2015, Susan participated in the Emmy award winning PBS series “The Embrace of Aging”, where she discussed finding meaning in life by connecting with and drawing on the wisdom of nature. In addition to leading retreats at Earthfire Institute, she has spoken at numerous conferences including: Connecting for Change, A Bioneers Event; California Institute for the Arts; Science and Non-Duality; International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine; Minding Animals International, New Delhi; Amity Foundation, Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Our Sacred Earth Conference, Social Venture Circle, Animal Energy World Conference, Cortona Friends Week, and the Global Earth Repair Conference.

Susan believes it is urgent to expand wildlife corridors in a network throughout the continents, as a way of living with nature, and works to preserve her local Yellowstone to Yukon wildlife corridor, the last intact wildlife mountain corridor in the world. She continues to oversee animal welfare at the Institute as she travels and speaks around the world, finding time to personally research the latest developments in holistic medical care for her beloved animals.