As a joint postdoctoral fellow with California Sea Grant and the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS), La Valle collaborates with California Sea Grant Extension Specialists, SCCOOS, research and academic institutions, policy makers, and stakeholders to ensure that project methods and deliverables satisfy the needs of stakeholders within the broader MPA management community.
La Valle came to California Sea Grant from UC Berkeley, where she worked on a collaborative project with the Marine Science Institute at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She completed her PhD in Marine Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2018, where she looked at the effects of nutrient-rich submarine groundwater discharge on coastal community composition and productivity—with funding from Hawaii Sea Grant. She was also the program manager of Our Project in Hawaii's Intertidal (OPIHI), a program promoting authentic undergraduate field-based research and citizen science in intertidal systems.
