Monica Noon
Director, Data Science for Resilience, Data International
American living in Falls Church, United States
Monica Noon is the Director of Data Science and a Friedman Science Fellow (2023-2025) at Conservation International. Her career began as an intern in state government and researcher studying wetland restoration and ecological processes. Monica’s first professional role was as an environmental scientist conducting stream, wetland, and biological surveys.
Monica’s career progression includes roles in state government, academia, the private sector, and non-profit organizations. After earning a master’s degree in GIS for Development and Environment from Clark University, she joined Conservation International as a GIS Manager, advancing in her roles and responsibilities over the years. She served on the executive board for the Society of Conservation GIS (SCGIS) for several years.
Monica’s career is marked by significant achievements, including completing two years of service with the U.S. Peace Corps in Zambia’s environment program. She extended her Peace Corps service with Kasanka Trust Limited, managing a participatory forest management project around protected areas in Zambia. Her publication, “Mapping Irrecoverable Carbon in Earth’s Ecosystems” in Nature Sustainability, led to a $150M commitment from Conservation International, the Walton Foundation, and the government of France to protect the world’s highest reserves of irrecoverable carbon and biodiversity.
Monica co-developed the award-winning Trends.Earth plugin for open-source QGIS software, supporting countries’ land degradation neutrality commitments to the United National Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3. She also raised $1M to build and pilot the Climate Positive Land Use Strategy (CPLUS) decision support tool for natural climate solutions (NCS), enabling stakeholders to co-design NCS action plans. Additionally, she designed the STRONG (Strengthening Talent Research Opportunities for Networking and Growth) program, partnering with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to gain research experience in conservation science and build capacity and networks across the African Diaspora.
