Ben Matthews is The Nature Conservancy in Vermont’s River Restoration Coordinator focused on reconnecting and restoring critical freshwater habitats across the State of Vermont and beyond.  He has spent the past 20 years working with engineers, biologist, and regulators to restore fish passage and increase flood resiliency in critical geographies across the northeastern Appalachian range. Being heavily involved in the full spectrum of this work, he has waded miles of streams with a chainsaw to install large wood habitat structures, provided construction oversight for complex dam removal and culvert upgrade projects to ensure fish passage, and developed model-based decision support tools to optimize river restoration project selection and encourage multi-objective outcomes.  Ben has extensive training in U.S. Forest Service stream simulation design for aquatic organism passage, hydraulic and hydrologic modeling with HEC-RAS, TR-55 and HY-8 programs, and U.S Fish & Wildlife Service fish passage desgin and evaluation methodologies. He also sits on the board of the Society of Ecological Restoration Northeast Chapter, where he is co-chair of the justice, equity, and inclusion committee.