Also, I’m an educator and park ranger.

In fact, that’s me with a Eurasian Eagle-owl in a National Park Service standard-issue Smokey Bear hat during a Junior Ranger program about birds.

So, a little about me. I’m a Jackson Wild and Webby award-winning journalist, content creator, and filmmaker with over a decade of experience. I make videos, write stories, take photos, design infographics, and develop creative content strategies. I’ve made stuff for PBS (like PBS Nature and PBS Digital Studios), Popular Science (where I was the Head of Video, Editorial & Branded), and The Field Museum (where I documented scientists in the field and lab for a YouTube channel called The Brain Scoop). Making films is how my reflection ended up in one of the most perfectly round objects on planet Earth—a silicone sphere used to redefine how we measure things in the universe. But, that’s not all I do.

I was a National Park ranger at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge along the coast in Queens, New York. I developed lesson plans, produced educational materials, and led classes about urban ecology and climate change for NYC school kids. After I hung up my hat, and as part of a National Science Foundation grant, I developed and taught a graduate STEM science communication course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which provided students with tools to turn research into visual media.

Teaching, designing lesson plans, and working with students has a lot in common with making media. There’s no better way to learn a thing than by telling a story about it.

Recently, I made a Powers of Ten-inspired short film about the brain for Pioneer Works Science Studios. For Columbia Climate School, I made a six-part video series about climate research. For the Wildlife Conservation Society, I made a series of vertical Instagram Reels highlighting the organization’s conservation work in New York and around the world. The National Park Service even asked me back, this time without the Smokey Bear hat, to make a few retro style PSAs about “Leave No Trace.”

Currently, I’m making a short film about organic chemistry for the Dreyfus Foundation's Chemistry Shorts project. They want it to be weird and beautiful. So, I said hell yes. Also, I’m programming a Museum of the Moving Image creature feature screening and event, in which participants and I will make a Sci-Fi movie together.

Drop me a line at thomas.r.mcnamara@gmail.com and say hello.