Plenary Session program
Dr. Daniel Wildcat
Professor, Haskell Indian Nations University & Author
Presentation title: A question: What story do we tell about ourselves in natural history museums?
Dr. Daniel Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. His service as a teacher and administrator at Haskell spans nearly 40 years. In 2013 he was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Dr. Wildcat received an interdisciplinary Ph. D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In 1994 he partnered with the Hazardous Substance Research Center at Kansas State University to create the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center and subsequently started the HERS summer undergraduate internship program with KU professor Dr. Joane Nagel. He is a noted speaker on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and has offered programs for NOAA, NASA, AGU, ESA, NCAR, and many scientific organizations and universities.
Dr. Wildcat is currently the principal investigator of a 20M, 5-year, NSF-funded project to develop the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Research Hub at Haskell: a research hub where Indigenous knowledge will be intrinsic to the climate science developed to understand climate change impacts on Indigenous coastal Peoples of the U.S. and its territories. He is the author and editor of several books: "Power and Place: Indian Education In America", with Vine Deloria, Jr.; "Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America", with Steve Pavlik.
His book, "Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge", suggests Indigenous ingenuity — Indigenuity — is required to reduce the environmental damage in the Anthropocene. He is a co-author of the Southern Great Plains chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Dr. Wildcat’s forthcoming book, "Indigenuity: Learning the Lessons of Mother Earth", will be released in late November 2023.
Alexander Collot d'Escury
Chairman, Bruynzeel Storage Group
Presentation title: Creating Space for a Healthy Planet
After studying at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and IMD in Lausanne, Alexander worked for over 16 years in various marketing, sales, and leadership roles at Sara Lee and Nestlé (in The Netherlands, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Hungary). In 2007, Alexander joined Desso as CCO. Desso is a global carpet and artificial grass manufacturer- and installer. He became CEO in 2012 and led the company until its acquisition by Tarkett SA (Euronext) in 2015. Under his leadership, Desso became recognized as a global leader in Cradle-to-Cradle and Circular Economy principles. Following Desso, Alexander served as CEO of Prinsen Berning Group, a leading European sports nutrition company.
In November 2019, Alexander joined Bruynzeel as CEO, a role he held until October 2024, after which he transitioned to Chairman of the Group. Under his leadership, Bruynzeel repositioned itself as The Footprint Reduction Company, driven by its mission ‘Creating Space for a Healthy Planet’.
Alexander is very passionate about the museum industry and the sustainable preservation of precious collections. He, amongst others, serves as a Board member at De Pont Museum (Tilburg, The Netherlands) – the leading museum for contemporary art in the Benelux. He is married and has 3 children.
Dr. Jocelyn Colella
KU Biodiversity Institute Curator of Mammalogy
Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Presentation title: Natural History Collections: a One Health Nexus
Jocelyn P. Colella is an evolutionary biologist interested in genomic mechanisms of adaptation and hybridization among mammals, with an acute interest in biodiversity conservation. Dr. Colella completed her graduate education at the University of New Mexico, where she was classically trained in scientific collecting and curation at the Museum of Southwestern Biology.
Her dissertation research focused on the evolutionary and conservation consequences of post-glacial secondary contact and hybridization among high-latitude mustelids. Her postdoctoral research at the University of New Hampshire aimed to identify genomic mechanisms of dehydration tolerance in desert-adapted rodents by pairing fieldwork with in-lab physiological experiments to characterize complex mammalian responses to their environment.
Dr. Colella’s current research program utilizes museum collections (both old and new) to understand how organisms change through time by integrating genomics, morphometrics, physiology, and ecology.