Scott Loarie

Scott Loarie is executive director and co-developer (with Ken-ichi Ueda) of iNaturalist, a nonprofit that connects people with nature to drive global conservation. In 2024, Loarie received the prestigious Heinz Award for the Environment.

Loarie’s love for nature began during his childhood on the Russian River in rural Northern California, where exploring the outdoors sparked a lifelong fascination with biodiversity. That passion led him to earn degrees in biology from Stanford University and a PhD in environmental science from Duke University. As a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, Loarie studied how climate change is reshaping ecosystems worldwide, from banding birds in Central America to tracking elephants with GPS collars across Africa.

In 2011, Loarie’s growing fascination with the power of technology to scale and decentralize solutions inspired him to leave academia and build iNaturalist — a platform that not only inspires curiosity and discovery but also fuels scientific breakthroughs and conservation action.

INaturalist stands on the premise that every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. The company shares users' findings with scientific data repositories, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, to help scientists find and use data.