Ky Miller

Ky is a Florida native and holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Environmental Science from New College of Florida.
Prior to joining the School of the Environment, Ky spent one year working as a Princeton in Latin America Fellow with Partners for Andean Community Health, where they managed an undergraduate intern team and assisted with developing a long-term, agroecology-based student research project. They also worked as a junior environmental consultant with Stocking Savvy, LLC, to restore threatened wetland ecosystems on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Later, Ky sharpened their skills in qualitative analysis when they collaborated with Dr. Erika Díaz-Almeyda to develop an applied ethnographic research project documenting Mayan traditional ecological and agricultural knowledge in Yucatán, México.

Ky now studies political ecology and Indigenous-led conservation efforts in Latin America at the Yale School of the Environment, where they work with Mayan land defenders to examine how Mayan communities’ relationship to local and international conservation has transformed following the construction of an extractive megadevelopment project. By applying a human rights and environmental justice framework, Ky supports just conservation practices that preserve Indigenous peoples’ biocultural heritage and territories, which house over 80% of the world’s biodiversity.
After YSE, Ky plans to support Indigenous sovereignty and land management as a consultant for an NGO, governmental or international agency with a focus on rights-based biodiversity conservation. Ultimately, Ky aspires to chart a future for sustainable and effective conservation practices that incorporate both human and environmental concerns in the face of expanding extractive developments and climate change in the Global South.