ISA Certified Arborist, Forester, Educator

Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) Certified Forest Therapy Guide
& ANFT Certified Forest Therapy Trail Certification Consultant

Dr. Tamberly Conway, Founder and CEO of Conservation Conexions, serves as a global conservation, diversity and partnership consultant, Certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, Certified Forest Therapy Trails, Spaces and Places Consultant, International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist and an international speaker.

Tamberly served as a Conservation Education Specialist and Partnerships, Diversity, and Inclusion Specialist for 12 years with the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) Conservation Education Program in Texas and Washington, D.C.  During her tenure she advanced diversity engagement in urban and community forestry settings. Areas of practice included: relationships between nature exposure and health; correlations between forest health and human health; conservation education and community empowerment, with a strong focus upon Latino communities in the US and Latin America. Many of these efforts resulted in implementation of urban food forests, urban gardens, education around urban tree canopy benefits, and empowering youth and community leaders to advance this work in their own communities.

During her tenure with the USFS, she worked to propel Forest Therapy within the agency and among diverse communities through health and nature collaborations and led the implementation of the first-ever bilingual Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) guide training in collaboration with numerous diverse partner organizations. Tamberly left the USFS in January 2020 to pursue a new Nature and Forest Immersion path, as she believes Nature and Forest Therapy is a powerful mechanism to create relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, thereby supporting the health of people and the planet.  She continues to throttle forward with the concept and actions around integrating relational and therapeutic forest and nature immersion as a mechanism to support the care, tending, and nurturing of humans, the more-than-human world, forests, and other ecosystems.

Tamberly is propelling the paradigm of nurturing self, others and the land.  Through her new entity, Nurturing Nature™, the manifestation of a Forest Healing Center and a Senior/Elder Community of Care facility will soon become a much-needed reality.  This will shift the paradigm of senior care to a more inclusive and supportive model which will inspire and affect national and global social change.

Tamberly’s intention is to connect and collaborate with others in this manifestation. She invites you to join her in creating lasting change that will positively affect future generations and expand the reciprocal nurturing nature of self, one another and our Mother Earth.

Tamberly received her B.S. in Agriculture and a major in Wildlife Management, from McNeese State University, in Louisiana. She attended Stephen F. Austin State University, in Texas, where she received a M.S. in Forestry with a major in Forest Recreation Management and a Ph.D. in Forestry, majoring in Human Dimensions in Natural Resources, with thesis and dissertation foci upon improving activities, facilities and services for Latino communities in recreation settings and improving community outreach and conservation education programs and methods to improve reach and increase relevancy among Latino communities.

At 21 years of age, Tamberly had the opportunity to sail to Central America. Knowing very little Spanish and not much about the Latino culture, she jumped ship in Guatemala to embark upon a journey of cultural and linguistic discovery, which laid the groundwork for her passionate focus for working with, and for, Latino communities in connection with natural resource conservation and stewardship.

Tamberly is the 2011 recipient of the Chief’s Awards, the highest honor in the U.S. Forest Service, 2015 Abraham Lincoln Honor Award for Diversity, Inclusion and Outreach — one of the United States Department of Agriculture’s highest honors,  and the 2016 Vice Chancellor’s Award in Excellence Partnership Award from Texas A&M AgriLife.

What is Nature and Forest Immersion (aka Forest Bathing or Nature and Forest Therapy)?

Shinrin-Yoku is loosely defined as, “making contact with and taking in the atmosphere of the forest”, which is a practice that is now backed by rigorous research showing the positive mental, physical, emotional and spiritual effects derived by this experience.

What We Do
We strive to create a system of mycelial connections above ground in uniting humans and nature through the Nature and Forest Immersion practice, working with individuals, organizations, agencies and communities to carry forward this practice into the world for both human and forest wellness, which are so intricately intertwined.

What We Believe
We believe that together, through this re-emerging practice of remembering and reconnecting to the land, we can foster a vibrant future for ourselves and our loved ones, and future generations, as well as, our planet Earth to which we are all connected, as we move forward in unison on the land.

We believe this practice has the potential to heal a number of societal and climate change-related issues, as the practice lends to heart-centered decision-making practices and a renewed relationship and remembering of one’s connection with the land. This remembering often inspires a sense of stewardship and knowing that caring for the land, is also, caring for oneself and one’s community.

Who We Work With
I became a Certified Forest Therapy Guide in order to carry this practice forward into diverse communities and in connection with public lands. I believe coupling this reconnective nature and forest immersion practice with tree planting, care and monitoring, as well as general forest health practices and conservation, will serve to support healthy forests and therefore, healthy people, as we are interwoven together in a fine fabric of interconnectedness.

I amicably took flight from the US Forest Service in January 2020 to focus upon advancing this work of deep nature connection and relatedness, as a result of my many years working in the realm of forest conservation. I believe this practice brings healing to both human and forest communities, as people join in unison and in discovery of reconnection with self and the more-than-human world.

Our vision is to empower communities through the lens of Nature and Forest Immersion as a support system that may be used in tree planting, care, tending and monitoring. This methodology will support relationships among people, individual trees and entire forest communities, thereby fostering long term focus on holistic concern and care that will develop a new cadre of conservation leaders and stewards, who will continue to share this conservation ethic with others in their communities.