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Our work is built on a foundation of kindness and collaboration. As a lab, we:

• Communicate honestly and respectfully: We practice active listening (avoiding interruptions, distractions, and judgments) and give and receive constructive feedback with empathy. We listen openly to different ideas and respect different styles of thinking and processing. We seek to understand our own communication styles and how they affect our interactions with each other.
• Collaborate as a team: We do not need to compete with each other for resources, recognition, etc. We strive to combat scarcity mindsets. Our diverse skills and backgrounds enhance our lab community, and we strive to create a space where we can work equally towards our common goals.
• Work to create a safer space: We strive to make the lab a safer space for all lab members. Lab members should not feel that they need to hide or feel the pressure to share parts of their identities, beliefs, and/or cultures at work. We are particularly attentive to marginalized identities that are often excluded from academia or confronted with hostility and biases. We prioritize open-mindedness and inclusive discussions and value different perspectives.
• Practice accountability: Trusting relationships depend on us taking responsibility for our actions and their impacts on each other. We are reflective about our mistakes and acknowledge power dynamics, both within the research group and with the wider community. We are attentive to our biases. Everyone makes mistakes: through reflection, we own them and learn from them (and ask for help!).
• Embrace interdisciplinarity and different knowledge systems: We are open to different approaches and ways of knowing. The research questions we are trying to answer are complex and often require integration of many different fields. No one is an expert in all fields: we strive to develop our own expertise and trust others’ expertises. We also encourage collaborations with people who do not have traditional science or research backgrounds/experiences, as we recognize that there are diverse ways of knowing.
• Celebrate successes and normalize failures/rejection: We are supportive and proud of each other. Rejection and failure are so common in academia (e.g., grant proposals don’t get selected for funding, the manuscript you were really excited about gets a desk rejection), but are not always mentioned. We support each other through these challenges and celebrate each other’s achievements.
• Use science to serve the public: Our research often has an applied component. We reach out to community partners and share our results beyond academia. We also recognize the legacies of dispossession in conservation science and seek to address the ways in which the scientific community has harmed and excluded diverse voices.
• Nurture our lives outside of work: Our research is not the only important part of our lives. We recognize the importance of our commitments, relationships, and goals outside of work. We try not to normalize overwork or being overly busy.

These values are aspirational. As a community, we come together every fall to revisit our values and reflect on how we can better enact them on a daily basis.