Sharon (Shari) Wilcox is the Texas Representative for Defenders of Wildlife.  In this role, Shari focuses on wildlife habitat connectivity and restoration; private landowner outreach; and threatened and imperiled species including cats, bats, bears, reptiles and amphibians. She serves as lead on the ocelot conservation program and and serves as a member of Defenders' borderlands jaguar conservation team. Her professional trajectory has been driven by a concern for and commitment to ensuring a sustainable future for wildlife and wild places. In her roles as a conservation professional and as an academic, she has sought to understand how people interact with, communicate about, and value wildlife and habitats. She is committed to advocating for ways to better connect diverse human communities with sustainable futures, incorporating social values with scientifically informed conservation practices.

Shari holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Geography from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a past Research Fellow with the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution. She is the co-editor of the book, Historical Animal Geographies, and has authored a number of scholarly articles and book chapters examining contemporary and historical interactions of human communities and wildlife in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.  She is currently finishing her book, Jaguars of Empire, under contract with the University of North Carolina Press.  In her free time, Shari competes nationally in equestrian dressage with her horse, Pecos.