Molly McCarthy-Cunfer

Executive Director

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Molly McCarthy-Cunfer is a hunter, trapper, angler, and outdoorswoman. Molly grew up in western Massachusetts fishing with her parents and sister, and occasionally hunting with her dad for whitetail deer and ruffed grouse. From a young age, she always had an interest in Alaska, and first visited when she turned 22 on a solo trip to volunteer at the remote Kitoi Bay Salmon Hatchery on Afognak Island for two weeks. Unsurprisingly, she fell in love with Alaska, and moved there the next year upon graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a Bachelor of Aquaculture and Fisheries Technology. She entered a Masters program at the University of Alaska Anchorage studying sockeye salmon paleolimnology on the Kenai Peninsula and spent 2.5 years assessing fisheries data, and taking sediment cores from Upper Russian Lake in both the summer and winter to determine salmon populations for the last few millennia in the area based on sedimentary nitrogen ratios. Upon completing and publishing her Masters, Molly worked as a Research Professional and co-lead for a major effort to resurrect and digitize the public record for Alaska’s fishing regulations. Her team found, digitized, and coded all proposals submitted to the Alaska Board of Fish from its inception in the late 1950s, and built a highly intuitive database to assess the effectiveness, equity and efficiency of the process. Upon completion of her research projects through the University, Molly began working for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as their Hatchery Outreach Coordinator for the William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery in Anchorage. She designed the visitor center, ran tours, taught many public courses on fishing in Alaska, and scripted, developed, edited and produced many online “how to” videos for the Department’s YouTube channel. She left that position after 4 years and moved to the Division of Wildlife Conservation where she took on the Governor’s Hunt Permit Program Coordination, which included coordinating and marketing Big Game permit raffles and auctions for the Department and partner nonprofit organizations. Molly is very excited and motivated in her new role for the Alaska Wild Sheep Foundation and believes her skills and knowledge as an outdoorswoman, paired with her education in fish and wildlife conservation and experience with outreach and marketing, will help her bring many of the foundation’s ideas and goals to fruition in the future.

Outside of work, Molly’s passions and hobbies seem to revolve around food in some fashion, whether its hunting, fishing, trapping, foraging, and gardening, which she enjoys doing with her husband, Scott, and two labrador retrievers, Keta and Brownie. Her other hobbies include cooking, canning and food preserving, gardening, hiking, fur sewing, distance running, and rock climbing.

Thor Stacey

Lobbyist

Bio goes here.

Rebecca Schwanke

Biologist

Bio goes here.