A first-generation college graduate and master’s student in landscape architecture, Shannon Callahan is aiming to combine her background in restoration ecology from the University of Illinois with her interest in native landscape design to combat the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Having served as the conservation ecologist for the St. Louis Audubon Society, Shannon is well-versed in the local demand for ecologically informed landscaping as people move away from unsustainable practices. She has been invited to lecture for Shaw Nature Reserve, St. Louis County Public Libraries, Missouri Master Naturalists, and Partners for Native Plants, often focusing on the predicted regional impacts of climate change, and has been featured on St. Louis Magazine’s House of Lou podcast. She takes a special interest in drought-hardy plantings, inspired by her time working for the Department of Conservation in the Ozark glades of central Missouri. She is a proponent of combining ecological education and outreach with the arts to attract new audiences and promote attainable conservation practices into the broader cultural consciousness, demonstrating to people that the choices they make in their own yards matter. She has taken steps to increase local ecological art events by organizing Missouri ecology-themed art markets and trailside classical music performances. In 2023, Shannon launched her own native landscape consulting and design startup, Callahan Ecological Connections, which she plans to expand through the knowledge and skills acquired here in the MLA program. As a budding landscape designer, she has contributed to the expanding regional mosaic of urban wildlife habitat and hopes to reconnect humans and human spaces to the natural world through her continued advocacy work.
