Jennifer Bevington

Jen Delgadillo Bevington was born in Los Angeles, spent formative years in the Chicago area, and now lives in Oakland, happy to have spent most of her life living on the California coast.

She is thrilled to have joined the PWF board and to be back spending time supporting animal welfare and environmental conservation.  During the first half of her career, Bevington worked in museum education in science, natural history and wildlife museums, all of which were deeply rewarding experiences.  She developed award-winning environmental programs, was part of the organizing team that relaunched Earth Day in 1990 in Los Angeles in honor of the first Earth Day in 1970, and which kickstarted the recent environmental movement and expansion to public schools.  Through her work as Education Director of Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek, CA, Bevington met renowned primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall and brought Dr. Goodall’s program, Roots & Shoots to the San Francisco Bay Area.  She volunteered for Dr. Goodall in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, working with public schools on their Roots & Shoots programming.

Bevington has worked in higher education for the past 15 years, primarily at UC Berkeley and now at Sonoma State University, focused on pre-college programming for high school students who would be first in their family to attend college.  Her pre-college programming work has included entrepreneurship education, STEM education, and she is currently working to streamline pathways to higher education for careers in education and healthcare for students in rural Northern California.

Bevington’s first whale watching trip was with the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles where she worked.  The education staff planned adult and family field trips throughout Southern California, and a favorite was whale watching around the Channel Islands off the Santa Barbara coast.  She spent most of her career at the Natural History Museum expanding access to these types of environmental education programs and opportunities for children and adults.

Jen and her husband have been SCUBA diving for many years, and have been able to dive and explore the marine environment in some of the most beautiful offshore settings in the world, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Red Sea off the coast of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, Fiji, Bali, Thailand, Honduras, Mexico, and California.

Jen is very excited to be joining the board as the incoming board president, and working with such a dedicated and impressive team of staff and fellow board members.