Client Case Study: NASA

Helping Earth Observations Meet the Moment for Biodiversity Conservation

The Challenge

Despite growing investments, the world is still losing the race against biodiversity collapse. Facing accelerating species extinction and ecosystem loss—and their impacts on human health and flourishing—the biodiversity field has long needed more than just additional funding. It needs smarter, more user-centered ways of deploying the tools already at hand. 

One of the most powerful of these tools is Earth observation data. While NASA’s satellite data offers unprecedented insights into ecological change, and is freely available to the public, it remains underutilized by conservation practitioners working on the ground. 

The Opportunity 

NASA recognized this gap and set out to better connect its data with the needs of biodiversity decision-makers. To support this, NASA’s Biological Diversity and Ecological Conservation program managers engaged Metropolitan Group (MG)—where I then served as a Vice President—to help design and launch new initiatives focused on making remote sensing more accessible and actionable for biodiversity conservation. I've had the honor of leading and collaborating with MG’s team since the work began.

Our Role Together, we have helped NASA:

• Design the Catalyst for Biodiversity Conservation accelerator: a nascent program to seed partnerships and pilot efforts that make NASA data more accessible, usable and relevant for biodiversity practitioners.

• Engage a wider circle of stakeholders to build awareness about, and provide resources to help them apply for, NASA funding. These groups included Tribes, conservation NGOs, humanitarian organizations, local leaders, the private sector, funders, and more—many of whom had never before collaborated with NASA.

• Facilitate teaming and collaboration across NASA’s biodiversity experts, so that the agency is able to respond to biodiversity needs in ways that represent more than the sum of NASA’s parts.  

Results

The results are only just beginning to manifest. But to name a few:

• Signed Space Act Agreements with Conservation International and Mercy Corps to pilot new data applications.

• Unprecedented response to a 2024 NASA solicitation for biological diversity and ecological conservation. Our work inspired:

  • A fourfold increase in the number of proposals. 

  • A threefold increase in private sector proposals. 

  • More informed questions from applicants, who submitted more relevant proposals with higher compliance. 

  • The programs’ first proposals from a Tribe or a territorial government. 

  • 83% of proposal project leads were new to NASA. 

  • 176 end users who are new to NASA were written into proposed activities—more than the past two solicitations combined, and more than those across the 20 solicitations before that. 

• Shifting perceptions from NASA as a data provider to NASA as a collaborative problem-solver.

Why It Matters

By helping NASA advance its vision of having a deeper understanding of the needs of conservation practitioners and ways to improve pan-NASA teaming, we are laying the foundation for more relevant and durable biodiversity solutions.

The work continues, but early wins show that when space-based data meets grounded priorities, inspiring results are possible.

Want to discuss how program design, strategy and facilitation can support your team's goals?

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