We are pleased to announce the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Aurelia Skipwith as the next Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today, December 12th, 2019. Skipwith’s education and experience should lend well for this important role. She earned her Bachelor of Science from Howard University, her Master of Science in Molecular Biology from Purdue University and a Juris Doctor from University of Kentucky School of Law. Skipwith was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, spent a lot of time in Saint Louis, Missouri, and spent her summers as an adolescent hunting and fishing with her grandparents in Mississippi. She explains: “If we didn’t grow it, catch it or kill it, we didn’t eat it.”
Her youth and then eventual career show she is both passionate about this work and has the experience and integrity to make real change within the organization. She began her career in 2006 with Monsanto, a company that provides agricultural products for farmers worldwide, as a lab technician. Her tenure there ended in 2012 when she held a managerial position in sustainable agriculture partnerships.
In 2013, she pursued a law degree and was a research and legal intern for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After that, she worked for the United States Agency for International Development as an intellectual property consultant. She then went on to work at Alltech, a company that provides all-natural animal nutrition worldwide and operates the world’s largest algae production system. Eventually she became general counsel at AVC Global, an agricultural logistics and financing firm that she co-founded.
Skipwith’s approval came from colleagues with a large variety of backgrounds, not just the farming, ranching or wildlife management industries. Current and former U.S. Senators and Representatives endorsed her, as well as numerous farm bureaus.
As both a scientist and a lawyer, she has a unique set of skills that suit this position very well. We look forward to her common-sense judgement regarding land use and wildlife management in the coming years. We also want to extend a warm congratulations to her from all of us at Protect The Harvest.
