Hello! My name is Neil Shea and I’m the new Restoration Program Director. I’ve spent the past six and a half years living and working in the Pacific Northwest and I couldn’t be more excited to get to work as a steward and advocate for my hometown watershed.
Growing up in Ipswich, the river was constantly in the background of my life. And like so many things, I took it for granted because it was always just there. It wasn’t until I went away to college at Holy Cross in Worcester that I began to culminate an appreciation for the natural sciences as a Biology major. During my junior and senior year geology courses, I researched sediment transport dynamics and the implications for road sand entering the local stream systems. While that may not sound exciting, it ingrained in me an appreciation for our surrounding landscapes through an understanding of how they came to be and continue to evolve.
My path following graduation has been a winding one, but I’ve been lucky to learn from and work with some incredible people along the way. During graduate school at the University of Connecticut I learned about the glacial history of New England, and how the legacy of the last Ice Age molded and sculpted not only the landscape, but also the people that live here. I continued my tour de New England with stops in New Hampshire and Vermont where I mapped rivers by canoe, melted down rocks with acid and flames, and counted atoms to find out the age of a watershed (doesn’t geoscience sound fun?).
This all led me to eventually pack up and move about as far across the country as I could go, to western Washington. I found my niche working for one of the state’s many federally recognized Indian Tribes, honing my skills as a geomorphologist while learning about the environmental and cultural importance of the area’s abundant natural resources. While my time in Washington was the most formative of my professional and personal life, the recent birth of our first child has made us realize that there is no place like home.
I could have never predicted the path that would eventually lead to the Ipswich River Watershed Association, but I can’t imagine another making more sense. The opportunity to see the watershed through a new lens and work in the community where I grew up is almost too good to be true. I look forward to working with a rich network of established partnerships and volunteers to continue moving the restoration needle and implement real change within the watershed. Big things await!