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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Alex-Andrew-Kinzer.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 172px; float: right;" />From one continent to the next. Last week, we interviewed <a href="/news_and_resources/blog/profiles_in_stewardship_dave_timmer#.UbFdLPk3uSp">Dave Timmer, Stewardship Coordinator for A Rocha USA</a>. Today, we talk with Alex and Andrew Kinzer who do their work with A Rocha half way around the world in Kenya. Alex and Andrew are both Wheaton College Environmental Studies graduates, and Alex attended Au Sable as a research student studying invasive shoreline grasses while also taking our &#39;Insect Biology and Ecology&#39; and &#39;Field Botany&#39; courses. Their work in A Rocha Kenya is extensive. Projects that serve the local community and conserve species and natural resources abound. We caught up with them to learn more about how they&#39;re putting their skills to work on the ground.</p>
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	<strong>What do you do in your current position?</strong></p>
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	<strong>Andrew:</strong>&nbsp;My official title with A Rocha Kenya is the Research Program Coordinator, which means I set the work plan for all our different projects, make sure they are done on time, that the data is entered, and that our reports and papers get written. As time consuming of a job as that is, I also manage to spend most of my time doing fieldwork, ranging from hiking through the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest surveying endangered bird species, scuba diving in the lagoon helping with coral resilience studies, or working on our conservation agriculture demonstration plot. A major part of what we do at A Rocha also involves living in close community with one another, including volunteers and guests at our guest house, so I also spend quite a bit of time making new friendships, investing in relationships, and planning fun activities or trips for people to do while they are staying with us. Most of my life here is wrapped up in and related to A Rocha Kenya somehow, and even though that means that life is not always as straight forward or as easy as I may like it to be, working here has been a tremendous blessing.</p>
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	<strong>Alex:</strong>&nbsp;I help out with small projects around A Rocha&#39;s field study centre, Mwamba. While my role isn&#39;t very scientific, I do contribute to the community here, our ASSETS program (which supports education through money generated by eco-tourism), and occasionally the research program. Outside of A Rocha, I have also worked for an environmental consulting company, called Cirrus Partners, in two studies, one concerning the invasive Emerald Ash Borer and the other supply chain dynamics. In addition, as newlyweds, Andrew and I are learning how to make sustainable decisions in our home life, and enjoy the steep learning curve of running a household on the Kenyan coast.&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 12px;">I also have decided to pursue a Masters in Landscape Architecture to better understand the design side of restoring ecosystems.</span></p>
