Dr. Rebecca Johnson is passionate about building coalitions and partnerships around biodiversity documentation, nature connection, and using species observations to understand climate and land use change. She co-directs Citizen Science at the California Academy of Sciences, where she is also a Research Associate in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology. Through her work, she supports and grows a community of naturalists working together to discover nature. She and her co-director, Alison Young were honored with the Bay Nature 2017 ‘Local Heroes for Environmental Education Award’.

Rebecca spearheads the Academy’s biodiversity work with the City of San Francisco and along the California Coast and is a founding member of the San Francisco Children & Nature Team. Dr. Johnson earned her B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, her M.A. in Systematics and Ecology from San Francisco State University and her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives in San Francisco with her family.