Marion Adeney

Director of Amazon and Fire Programs

Marion Adeney is Director of Amazon and Fire Programs at Conservation X Labs. She leads strategy development for CXL’s larger Amazon Program, as well as the Fire Challenge, an open innovation program to tackle the hard problem of fire in remote areas. A conservation ecologist with a broad interdisciplinary background, she is committed to working at the intersection of environmental conservation, science, and development. Prior to joining CXL, Marion served as a program officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Andes-Amazon Initiative from 2016-2021, where she focused on the conservation and monitoring of protected areas and Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon.

Previously, Marion was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow and Environmental Science Advisor at the US Agency for International Development in Washington DC and Lima, Peru. In Lima, she collaborated across sectors to better integrate science and the scientific community into programs and strategies for USAID’s Amazon conservation work in Peru, Brazil, and Amazon-wide.

Marion has a PhD in Conservation Ecology from Duke University and a Master of Arts in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology from Columbia University. Her research has focused on interactions of fire and flooding with ecosystem dynamics and human interventions in tropical forests and on Amazonian white sand ecosystems. Her BA is in American Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz.