Manasseh Franklin

Manasseh Franklin is a graduate student in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Having spent much of her adult life working in and writing about tourism-oriented communities in the Mountain West, including Jackson, Wyoming and Aspen, Colorado, she’s thrilled to join the Jay Kemmerer WORTH Institute and participate in initiatives to support tourism growth in Wyoming. She is particularly interested in the socio-cultural impacts that stem from the transition of resource extraction economies to tourism economies in rural communities. She also hopes to explore sustainable tourism development in mountain towns that are seeing expansive growth in tourism, often at the expense of the locals’ quality of life and cost of living.

Manasseh has been involved in the Haub School for the better part of a decade, initially as a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and Environment and Natural Resources where she wrote about receding glaciers in North America, and most recently as an adjunct instructor for both ENR and ORTM courses. Her travel and environmental articles have been published in mainstream publications including Adventure Journal, Alpinist, Aspen Sojourner, Rock and Ice, High Country News, and Western Confluence magazines, and she is the former Editor in Chief of the backcountry ski publication WildSnow.com. Her wide-ranging experience in the outdoors include working as a hiking and climbing guide in Aspen, and for a brief time, Nepal. She is excited to delve deeper into the multifaceted world of tourism development, both in her role with WORTH and as a graduate student in ENRS.