Tiffany Carey Jones standing and smiling in a wide wildflower meadow, looking back over her shoulder

Environmental scientist · Community builder · Great Lakes advocate

Belonging changes everything.

I create conversations, programs, and communities that help people reconnect — to place, to purpose, to one another, and to themselves.

Nature belongs to everyone. Yet the modern environmental movement was not built with everyone at the table.

For more than a decade, I have designed programs and partnerships that connect communities with land, water, wildlife, and the decisions that shape their neighborhoods. I work across science, faith, education, and lived experience — helping institutions listen differently, and helping communities build from the knowledge, relationships, and power they already hold.

The goal isn't participation for its own sake. It's agency, repair, and the freedom for communities to define what thriving looks like for themselves.

A question I keep returning to

How can we care for the planet, our communities, our families, and ourselves — without abandoning any of them in the process?

Tiffany Carey Jones planting and laughing with community members at the Marygrove rain garden

Four ways I show up.

Conservation is one of the ways I explore care, justice, community, and belonging — not the whole of it.

  • Community-centered conservation

    Building trust before programming, and designing with communities rather than for them.

  • Faith, nature, and belonging

    Working with churches, mosques, and synagogues where stewardship, healing, and gathering meet.

  • Careers and equity in conservation

    Naming the barriers to entering and staying in this field, and building toward something sturdier.

  • Motherhood and sustainable leadership

    Serving communities without disappearing from the people closest to me.

Read about the work

What I believe

A short manifesto.

  1. 01 Nature is a human right.
  2. 02 Communities should shape environmental work, not merely receive it.
  3. 03 Science matters, but relationships make change possible.
  4. 04 Environmental institutions must be willing to repair harm.
  5. 05 Representation changes who participates, what gets prioritized, and what becomes possible.
  6. 06 Service should not require abandoning yourself or your family.
  7. 07 The people closest to a place hold knowledge essential to its future.
Tiffany Carey Jones seated among wildflowers, closely observing a single bloom

A sunrise person.

I love the smell of dew, a carefully made cup of coffee, long walks that untangle my thoughts, and conversations that go beneath the surface. I'm drawn to ritual, water, movement, honest relationships, and the kind of questions that give us new language for who we're becoming.

Sunrises over sunsets. The Great Lakes and the national parks I still haven't seen. Faith as a daily practice, not a Sunday one. Astrology as a language for reflection, not a rulebook. Small talk exhausts me; the real conversation is where I come alive. I still think about the lake house my family talks about one day building — the kind of place that becomes a fixed point everyone returns to, year after year.

Editorial portrait of Tiffany Carey Jones in a Detroit street scene, wearing a yellow scarf

What I'm thinking about.

Writing and talks in progress, organized around the questions I keep coming back to.

  • What environmental justice requires when survival comes first

  • Who can afford to build a career in a mission-driven field

  • Motherhood and ambition in conservation

See what I'm exploring

A place to stay in the field — and not lose yourself in the process.

I'm developing a gathering space for women and mothers working in conservation, ecology, and environmental fields: a place for honest conversation, practical career support, sustained relationships, shared adventures, and the questions that are often too complicated for a panel.

Invite Tiffany into the conversation.

  • Faith & environmental stewardship
  • Community-centered urban conservation
  • Environmental justice & institutional repair
  • Careers, compensation & representation
  • Motherhood, service & sustainable leadership

From sunrise coffee to long walks to conversations that go beneath the surface, I'm less interested in having all the answers than in asking the questions that help us live more fully.