Sam Hain joins the District as a new AmeriCorps member serving as an Environmental Education Specialist.  Along with leading field trips and teaching local students, he is in charge of organizing teams and running workshops for Pierce County Envirothon.  He also helps with the habitat and farm programs, by working at volunteer events and assisting on projects like climate change mitigation efforts and alternative shoreline protection.

Sam was born in Palo Alto, California and lived there for the first 19 years of his life.  Growing up, he enjoyed camping, backpacking, and foraging for mushrooms with his family.  These interests led him to consider a career related to biology, conservation, and the environment.  In 2012, Sam graduated High School and moved to Tacoma to attend the University of Puget Sound, where he received a B.S. with a major in Biology and a minor in History.  Some of his favorite classes there were Ornithology, Field Botany, and War and Society in Premodern Europe.

Prior to starting with the Pierce Conservation District, Sam has worked in a few environmental jobs.  These include working as a museum docent at the Slater Museum of Natural History, where he taught visitors about biological concepts and the importance of research collections, as an intern with the Fish and Wildlife Service on Joint Base Lewis McChord where he assisted with research and helped to conduct prescribed burns, and as a prairie restoration technician with the Center for Natural Lands Management, where he engaged in restoration efforts over thousands of acres of threatened glacial outwash Prairies.