Dr. Catherine Phillips

Catherine serves as the Assistant Regional Director for Ecological Services in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeast Region. She has been with the Service since 1998 and got her start through the Career Awareness Institute at Mescalero National Fish Hatchery in New Mexico before working at Uvalde National Fish Hatchery and San Marcos Fish Technology Center in the Southwest Region. She also served as Deputy Project Leader and Project Leader at the Panama City Field Office in the Southeast. Catherine especially enjoys working across Service programs and with a variety of partners in non-traditional ways and is an advocate of finding solutions to achieve mutual mission success.

Catherine grew up in a large family in San Antonio, Texas, and did not realize that careers in conservation existed prior to her first internship with the Service. However, she quickly fell in love with the field and the mission. She is an advocate of continual learning and mentoring and working with diverse groups from all backgrounds to achieve innovative conservation success. Catherine loves spending time with her family: her husband, Craig and her three kids, a son in high school, daughter in middle school, and a one-year-old boy. She can be found gardening, in the water paddleboarding or snorkeling, and watching and attending college football games in the fall.

An avid reader and practitioner of adaptive leadership, Catherine continually reminds herself that real growth is in the discomfort zone! That being said, she thinks there is nothing wrong with taking time to seek a little comfort, respite, and self-care before tackling the next big challenge.