Sean MacGorman Powell

Sean (formerly Shawn) MacGorman Powell was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a child, he moved with his family to Connecticut, where he continued to reside through high school.

He attended college at the University of Rochester, in western New York State, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. During his college years, he worked as a biologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the City of Rochester's Bureau of Zoning & Planning.

Sean then attended graduate school at UCLA, where he earned his Master's degree in biology, studying mink and river otters inhabiting coastal Vancouver Island.

After graduating, he worked as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in southern California. While there, he conducted a field research study of the federally-listed threatened California gnatcatcher, a songbird inhabiting scrub habitat that is rapidly disappearing.

Sean later moved back to New England, where he worked at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, doing field studies of fishers (a tree-dwelling relative of otters) and black bears, and he co-authored a book on wild turkey wildlife biology. He also worked for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, where he conducted another study on black bears, this time in the Green Mountains.

Eventually, Sean returned home to Connecticut, where he worked 21 years as the CEO & President of the family business, a landscape company and garden center called Gledhill Nursery, Inc.

Sean currently resides in Oregon, living his decades-long dream to return to the Pacific Northwest, where he had studied mink and river otters as a graduate student.

Sean is the co-author of two books, and numerous research papers published in scientific journals.