Susan Virginia Poats is an anthropologist with a strong commitment to conservation and sustainable development. After earning a PhD at the University of Florida in 1979, she began her career by applying anthropology to farming systems research. In 1994, she turned her path towards environmental issues. She currently channels her efforts towards natural resource management through participatory research and community conservation with a gender focus. She uses conceptual and methodological tools drawn from the social sciences to train and mentor conservationists in their work with women and men in local communities. At the same time, she joins colleagues in building appropriate policies and procedures for natural resource conservation and use at multiple scales by a diverse array of social actors. These efforts have taken place largely in the context of Andean watershed management. She believes that multistakeholder fora, such as the Consorcio Carchi in northern Ecuador, have the potential to bridge the complex space between specific conservation sites and communities, and larger ecorregional or political units. Susan is the co-director of the IDRC funded MANRECUR Project "Collaborative Management of Natural Resources in Andean Watersheds in Northern Ecuador." Corporación Grupo Randi Randi, an Ecuadorian NGO that she helped to found 3 years ago, manages the project. MANRECUR builds on nearly 10 years of participatory analysis and management of resources in the El Angel River watershed in Carchi Province. The goal of the multidisciplinary team is to promote participation and equitable watershed management through multiscale research and multistakeholder social learning. The intent is to consolidate the Carchi experience and use it to promote new spaces for multistakeholder learning moving upscale from the El Angel watershed (100.000 ha) to the larger Mira hydrographic system (7,500 sq km) and out scale to two new watersheds. Key questions guide the project. How do we sustain processes of multistakeholder social learning? How do we keep a focus on gender and local participation while moving upscale to larger units of resource management? How do we best package the principles and processes of multistakeholder social learning? And finally, what are the best ways to conduct the local management of humid highland páramos in the north of Ecuador? Susan and her colleagues intend to help answer this last question by establishing a research station on a 400 ha páramo purchased last year at the top of the El Angel watershed. By becoming a part of the local large landholder group, they hope to influence a broader commitment to conserving these strategic and fragile "colchones de agua" and to encourage their neighbors to "think like a watershed."