Meet the team
We’re the core behind Team Kowari, a group drawn together by our mutual interest in ensuring the kowari will be protected and thriving for generations to come. While most of us have a scientific background, we’re all incredibly keen to get the wider Australian public interested in the kowari and its conservation. Let us know how you could utilise your unique skill set to help us promote and protect this hidden national treasure!
Our core members. Join the team today!
Molly Barlow
president
Molly is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide where she studies the kowari and what may be causing their population decline. Prior to starting her project, Molly has worked on a range of threatened species projects across South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. She has a particular love of dasyurids, having worked with Tasmanian devils, Eastern and Western quolls in the past (although kowari now take the top spot as her favourite).
William La Marca
co-founder & v.p.
William founded Team Kowari in 2019 to promote the kowari to the Australian public and to raise funding for his doctoral studies, which he completed through the Desert Ecology Research Group and Ecosystem Dynamics Lab at the University of Sydney. He was formerly part of the Quantitative and Applied Ecology Group at the University of Melbourne, where he received a Master of Science (with Distinction) for his work with small mammals on the Tiwi Islands. He is currently employed as a field ecologist at Wildlife Unlimited and remains the Vice-President of Team Kowari after serving as President from 2019-2024.
Jacinta Richardson
secretary
Jacinta is an ecologist with a driving passion for threatened species conservation. She is completely smitten with semi-arid and arid zone fauna, particularly dasyurids, and recently completed her Honours research on small mammal and reptile responses to a fire edge in Triodia mallee, with a focus on the Southern Ningaui. Jacinta finds the sassiness of dasyurids endearing and believes if more people were familiar with them, dasyurids would rival some of our more well-known animal groups in popularity.
Jacinta joined Team Kowari in 2024 and is very excited to be a member of the team.
Jim Phillipson
co-founder
Jim is a successful businessman with a longstanding background in supporting environmental initiatives, starting with the Wilderness Society and the Franklin River blockade in the 1980s and continuing through Bush Heritage, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and BirdLife Australia. His philanthropy and newfound interest in the kowari were instrumental to the creation of Team Kowari. Jim served as Secretary of Team Kowari from 2019-2024.
Dr. Kath Tuft
treasurer
Kath is the general manager of Arid Recovery, a predator-proof fenced reserve and research hub in outback South Australia. She completed a PhD on rock-wallabies and has since worked in hands-on conservation NGOs in tropical Australia and now the arid zone. She thinks kowaris are deservedly up there with Australia’s spunkiest native mammals and she is excited to be part of Team Kowari’s efforts.
Nathan Beerkens
community engagement
Nathan is an enthusiastic ecologist with a passion for getting people involved in nature. He thinks kowari are fantastic, even if they smell like a mop! Nathan is involved in the social media and community initiatives of Team Kowari.
Rob Brandle
researcher
Rob began studying the ecology of the stony deserts in the early 1990s, initially on threatened rodents and then through a three-year biological survey spanning South Australia’s Stony Deserts. He was inexorably drawn into the ecological mysteries of this largest remaining marsupial predator of the stony plains.
Prof. Chris Dickman
researcher
Chris is Professor Emeritus in Terrestrial Ecology at the University of Sydney. He has decades of experience researching the many and varied patterns in the distributions, abundances, and diversity of terrestrial vertebrates in arid Australia.
Dr. Aaron Greenville
researcher
Aaron is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, where he uses a strategic combination of population biology and trophic ecology to predict how ecosystems respond to climate change and the introduction of exotic species. He has over 20 years of experience in ecology across arid and forested environments.
Our Gold and Platinum members
The driving forces of Team Kowari!
William La Marca
Jim Phillipson
Nathan Beerkens
Kath Tuft
Rob Brandle
Chris Dickman
Aaron Greenville
Mario La Marca
Susan La Marca
David Phillipson
Nicole Cashin
Shilpa Rajkumar
Jarrad Barnes
Gabrielle O’Kane
Michael Beerkens
Veronica Beerkens
Gwenda Rudd
Joe Pasquale
Robert McLean
Claire Nelson
Andrew Daly
Chris Haskett
Heather Phillipson
Brendan Sheean
Nicola Ray
Eva Schrader
Henry Lydecker
Emily Rush
Vanessa Esau
Drew Wakefield
Nitya Phillipson
Tim Flannery
Simon Phillipson
Kurt Best
Donna Trewern
Andrea Frank
Conrad Smith
Sam La Marca
Pia La Marca
Fiona Jackson
Kealyn Madden
John Goldie
Jasmine Vink
Bobby Tamayo
Kerryn Smith