Honolulu ARCS Scholar Lindsay Young is vice president for research for the National Geographic Society's Pristine Seas Program. She heads an eight-member research team that works with conservationists, filmmakers, and communication and policy experts to help protect the world’s oceans. Young is also an affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management Department, and she remains on the board of Pacific Rim Conservation, the Hawai‘i-based non-profit conservation organization that she founded with fellow ARCS Scholar Eric VanderWerf to conserve imperiled ecosystems throughout the Pacific.

A world expert on marine birds, she received the Endangered Species Recovery Champion Award from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the 2022 Ralph Schreiber Conservation Award from the American Ornithological Society. In 2023 she received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to develop a research program and teach a course on blue carbon at the University of the Philippines in Manila. Blue carbon is carbon stored in coastal marine ecosystems that can help mitigate climate change and protect these areas from natural disasters. Read more about the award.