Silvia Alvarez-Clare, PhD, is Director of Global Tree Conservation at The Morton Arboretum,

leading a program focused on safeguarding threatened tree species through science-based conservation work conducted with stakeholders around the world. Dr. Alvarez-Clare’s work focuses on preventing extinction of threatened species around the world, for the benefit of biodiversity and people. She leads the Global Conservation Consortium for Oak, a network established by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) to ensure

that no species of oak goes extinct. She also serves as a conservation officer for BGCI, and is a member of the advisory board for the Global Trees Specialist Group, a voluntary network of more than 300 experts, which operates as part of the Species Survival Commission of the

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In 2023, Silvia spearheaded the creation of the the world's first and only Center for Species Survival: Trees, which was established at The Morton Arboretum through a strategic partnership with the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission to serve as a catalyst for tree conservation and accelerate the actions needed to reverse species loss. Dr. Alvarez-Clare was born in Costa Rica, where she obtained a bachelor of science in Biology from Universidad de Costa Rica in San José. She holds a master of science in Botany with a minor in Statistics and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology with a minor in Soil Science from the

University of Florida. She obtained a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Award in Biology, where she studied the greenhouse gasses emerging from the forest floor in Costa Rica. She was a guest researcher for 10 years at Argonne National Laboratory, and was a professor at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, before joining the Arboretum as Tree Conservation Ecologist in 2017. She was elevated to her current role in 2021.