Michele Thieme is Deputy Director of Freshwater for WWF-US and supports WWF’s efforts to conserve freshwater ecosystems and manage river basins to support biodiversity and human livelihoods. She works with WWF offices around the world to build the resiliency of freshwater systems with a particular focus on river-related infrastructure, dams, and planning, as well as evaluation of basin health. WWF-US’ freshwater team focuses on interventions that support transboundary water governance, finance for bankable nature solutions, corporate water stewardship, and river conservation with the aim of maintaining and restoring healthy, connected freshwater ecosystems for people and nature. Michele has 25 years of experience in freshwater and spatial planning with over 30 scientific publications. Through relationships with academia, she brings the latest in science to applied river basin policy, management and conservation projects. She holds a B.S. in biology from University of Virginia and a Master’s in Fisheries Science from University of Arizona.