2025 Wyss Scholar: Tory Dille ’26 and Her Rich Background in Environmental Advocacy

Tory’s professional and academic interests have centered around community-based advocacy for wildlife and wild places. She holds an M.S. in Science Education from Montana State University (2019) and a BA in Anthropology and Environmental Science from Washington University (2013). She has lived in many communities across the West, but calls Livingston, Montana home.

Tory is currently working for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office and will be staying on with Earthjustice this summer. In 2024 she was a law clerk for the Center for Biological Diversity where she worked primarily on Endangered Species Act litigation to protect imperiled carnivores and their habitats, including species close to her heart and home: wolves and grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies.

Tory’s research during graduate school centered around bioregional curriculum design and environmental advocacy. She spent a number of years teaching high school biology, instructing field biology and snow science programs, and coordinating and leading multi-week wilderness trips on public lands across the Rockies and the Southwest. Tory was a founding faculty member and the Program Director for the Bozeman Field School in Bozeman, Montana and a member of the humanities faculty at Animas High School in Durango, Colorado. She has also worked as an educator in informal settings - she taught backcountry environmental education programs in Colorado, instructed youth mountaineering courses and directed organizational outreach for the Montana Wilderness School, and facilitated seminars on youth climate leadership for Northwestern University’s Civic Education Project.

Tory has held several roles in nonprofit outreach and development. In one of her favorite roles she served as the Development and Communications Manager for Yellowstone Ecological Research Center where she collaborated with local scientists to support long-term ecological monitoring and wildlife coexistence efforts in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. While working as a grant writer for Earth Law Center, Tory gained exposure to international environmental law and policy and represented the organization at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Colombia. Tory is beyond grateful to be part of the environmental law community at Lewis & Clark and for the opportunity to represent the school as a Wyss Scholar.

About the Wyss Scholars Program

Lewis & Clark Law School was selected in 2017 to be part of the Wyss Scholars Program. Funded by The Wyss Foundation, a private, charitable foundation dedicated to land conservation, the Wyss Scholars Program seeks to identify and support a new generation of leaders focused on land conservation issues. Lewis & Clark is one of only a few law schools in the country selected for this program.

Two Wyss Scholars are selected from Lewis & Clark Law School each year on the basis of their leadership potential and academic strength and their commitment to furthering land conservation.