M. Allison Stegner is a paleoecologist whose research synthesizes modern, historic, and deep-time records to study how species and ecosystems have responded to past environmental changes. She received a BS in Biology from Stanford University, and a PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. She continued on to a postdoctoral position at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she was a member of the Abrupt Change in Ecological Systems Group, an interdisciplinary team studying the drivers and consequences of abrupt ecological changes. Stegner is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, where uses lacustrine sediment cores to study biodiversity in the Anthropocene and the basis for defining the Anthropocene as a new geologic epoch.