Meet Celia White

NRC Clean Up Coordinator

Celia is happy to say she has never had to work indoors a day of her life. In the many corners of the world she has called home, she has been a naturalist, a land manager, and a top-tier moss
appreciator, from the rural mountains of Western Massachusetts to the hills and valleys of Italy (her favorite place), the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the Balkan Mountains of Bulgaria, the pine
savannas and bayous of the Deep American South, and of course the New River Valley.

Celia received a B.A. in Psychology and Educational Studies from Dickinson College. After graduating, she directed her childhood love of the wilderness into ecological restoration. As a
wildland firefighter with the Forest Service and AmeriCorps NCCC, she suppressed wildfires – and started many more prescribed burns – from California to Mississippi, spent many hours with
a chainsaw, and worked to restore critical ecosystems and habitat for endangered species.

She has led climbing, caving, and river canoeing trips with an adventure-focused nature center in the Shenandoah Valley, worked as a farmhand at Glade Road Growing in Blacksburg, and continues to indulge her love of setting (good) fires with the Pulaski County Wildland Fire crew. She currently also works as a forester and restoration ecologist with Watershed Restoration Solutions, LLC in Blacksburg.

As a Master Naturalist and a restoration ecologist, Celia enjoys sharing her love of our beautiful natural world and teaching others how to restore it, whether it be in the water, underground, on a fire, or high above the treetops. In her free time, she can be found performing acrobatics to help her partner take bug photos, reading a good book, tinkering with her ancient piano, or crouching down to look at something interesting on the ground.

B.A. in Psychology and Educational Studies, Dickinson College
Virginia Master Naturalist