Steven Williams has been a rock-skipping, wilderness-rambling, wildlife-ogling guy for as long as he can remember. Not surprisingly, he turned those interests into degrees in biology and resource management. His path, however, has gone from the wilderness to the halls of US national government and back again. (See CV)

Wanting to focus on applied management following his PhD in Forest Resources at Pennsylvania State University, Williams began working as a wildlife biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. He continued with three different state agencies for the next 17 years, moving his way up management. He got his first taste of the politics of civil service in 1995, when he lost his job as deputy executive director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission for what he describes as political reasons. It was his greatest challenge. “At that time, I was really questioning whether to continue in this profession,” he says. Following advice from mentors, he decided to keep going. And he's glad he did. “The experience opened the door to the two best career experiences I've had in my life,” he says.

Williams became the secretary of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. Noticed for his ability to bring different stakeholders together to resolve natural-resource conflicts, he was asked to become director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Although he loved the position, in which he spent three years, the red tape in Washington DC often proved a hurdle.

He left the federal post earlier this year to take up the position of president of the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) based in Washington DC. Being at a non-profit organization dedicated to science-based management allows him to focus more on conservation, he says. At the Fish and Wildlife Service, he was pulled in many directions. But the WMI's mission is more centred on traditional conservation issues such as habitat and population management.

Williams says that the best advice he can give young scientists, other than finding a good spouse, is to “set yourself apart” by combining skill sets in a unique way. In gaining a background in statistics and the then nascent field of geographic information systems, he says, he offered more value to his future employers. In fact, his first employer has since told him that they hired him to see how those skills could help them. He has proved that the chance was worth taking.