Conservation scientist Samantha Helle was recently awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship by the U.S. Department of Education. Helle traveled to Nepal in 2019-2020 on a Fulbright Research grant to study how various stakeholders in wildlife-conflict hotspots proactively mitigate conflicts in policies regarding tigers and the inner workings of community-based anti-poaching units. Since then, she has collaborated with the National Trust for Nature Conservation, Women Acting Together for Change, and local buffer zone community forest user groups around the Chitwan and Parsa National Parks. Throughout her studies and career, she has been committed to studying how tiger populations thrive and the local capacity for tiger conservation outside protected areas in Nepal’s community-managed forests. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.