About

Navigate Your Conservation Career Pathway

The Hawai’i Conservation Alliance & Foundation welcomes you to Conservation Career Compass, a guide for your mālama ʻāina career voyage. On this site, you will find scholarship and job listings, guidance and advice from established professionals, and more!

As Hawaiʻi’s conservation career building resource for students and emerging professionals, it showcases key steps for a successful career in conservation. The site displays listings of current volunteer openings, jobs, and events. These opportunities are also displayed as stepping stones
for building experience. The site includes important curated perennial information including career guidance articles and stories from conservation professionals.

The Conservation Career Compass is led by the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance and Foundation with the generous funding of the Hauʻoli Mau Loa Foundation and collaborative support from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, Promise to PaeʻĀina Initiative, and the Nāhululeihiwakuipapa Subcommittee.

For questions, opportunities, and suggestions, please contact capacity@hawaiiconservation.org.

Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance and Foundation

As a partnership of 27 government, cultural, educational, and non-profit member organizations, the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance envisions thriving, abundant lands and seas with their native ecosystems actively cared for by generations of stewards, steered by excellent science and Hawaiian values and practice.

We provide unified leadership, advocacy, and collaborative action to conserve and restore native ecosystems and the unique biodiversity of our islands.

Founded in 2006, the Hawai‘i Conservation Alliance Foundation (HCAF) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit with the purpose and mission to support and advance the capacity-building, native ecosystem and biocultural conservation work of the Hawai‘i Conservation Alliance through fundraising, advocacy, and strategic outreach and communications.

Natural Resource Sector Partnership

The Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance & Foundation has been working with Kupu and partners on the Natural Resource Sector Partnership to help raise awareness of conservation careers in Hawaiʻi through resources such as Conservation Career Compass and others.

The NRSP is a collaborative effort between educators and industry to change systems and better prepare and inspire Hawaiʻi’s students to meet the current and future demands of natural resources professions in Hawaiʻi.

Evolution of Conservation Career Compass

Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance launched Conservation Connections in 2014 to serve as an online community to connect people to environmental organizations across Hawaiʻi that offer a variety of opportunities ranging from volunteering, internships, research, and jobs to help protect our island’s precious natural resources. With 190 Sites and Programs listed on Conservation Connections, we encourage all conservation related organizations to register their site/program in order to share their opportunities with the public.

As sister sites, Conservation Connections and Conservation Career Compass are integrated to a certain extent. As sites and programs populate Conservation Connections with opportunities, these opportunities are displayed on Conservation Career Compass through an RSS feed. While Conservation Connections is geared more towards the public, Conservation Career Compass targets high school students, college students, and young emerging professionals.

Inspired by Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage, the Conservation Career Compass, Hawaiʻi’s new resource hub for conservation, guides the next generation of stewards on their voyage to a career in conservation or mālama ʻāina.

When Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia, the Polynesian Voyaging Canoes of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, left Hawaiʻi in 2014, a group of environmental organizations formed a collective to embark on a journey to change our relationship to the Hawaiian Islands. This collective signed the Promise to PaeʻĀina to demonstrate their commitments to protect and care for Hawaiʻi, recognizing our responsibility to the ʻāina. From this Promise, a commitment to Our Future was formed to invest in the future leaders of Hawaiʻi by providing proper tools, training, and experience to advance conservation work beyond our lifetimes and abilities.

HR Contacts Form for Posting Opportunities to Conservation Career Compass

Post an Opportunity to Conservation Career Compass!

If your organization has conservation related opportunities that you would like to post to Conservation Career Compass, please complete the HR Contacts Form for Posting Opportunities to Conservation Career Compass (button to left of this paragraph). Once you submit the form, our staff will invite you into the database to begin posting your opportunities! Opportunities that can be posted include jobs, internships, fellowships, volunteering, events (talk story nights, conferences, etc.), mentorship opportunities, trainings & workshops, research needs, and scholarships.