Michelle Perez

World Resources Institute
Washington, DC
USA


Biographical Sketch:
Michelle Perez is a Senior Associate on the Water Quality Team in the Food, Forests, and Water Program. She leads the farm conservation targeting projects, the Mississippi River basin nutrient trading project, and helps develop farm- and watershed-scale diagnostic tools. Michelle conducts policy analyses of voluntary approaches to increasing adoption of farm conservation practices. She explores improvements to these approaches including outcomes-based goal setting, performance measurement, pay-for-performance incentive mechanisms, and geographic targeting. She collaborates with scientific and economic modeling partners to develop field- and watershed-scale nutrient reduction assessment tools for use by farmers and policy-makers to achieve water quality goals. Michelle also collaborates with leading environmental, conservation, and farm trade association groups, university specialists, and federal, state, and regional agency representatives. Michelle holds a doctorate in environmental policy from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. Her dissertation is a three-state comparative case study of agricultural regulations in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. She has an undergraduate degree in biology from Occidental College. Previously Michelle worked at the Environmental Working Group and the Alliance to Save Energy. Michelle also serves as past president and council member of the National Capital Chapter for the Soil Water Conservation Society.

Papers:
255 Targeting farm conservation efforts for improving water quality