Me. The Greenhorn. Well. I’m a native Californian, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a little girl, I would sit on the roof of my home and watch the sun set over the hills, that is until the next door neighbors snitched to my parents and I was banished from ever climbing up there again. As I grew, I watched the orchards and fields turn to housing, schools, and streets. As an adult I enjoy the open spaces that the hard, visionary work of so many people in the East Bay, SF Peninsula and Marin County has preserved.
A graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Hastings San Francisco, I have always focused my career on efforts to protect the environment. I ran a cutting-edge EV technology firm, led a multi-disciplinary wetlands restoration team, and implemented strategic growth for environmental nonprofit organizations.
I started my career in research and development of charging systems for electric vehicles. That was in the early 80s, during a time of marked corporate and policy hostility to EVs, a la the movie Who Killed the Electric Car; nevertheless we were able to build a successful manufacturing business before licensing our technologies to larger entities.
From there I moved on to serve as Manager of the Giacomini Wetlands Restoration Project, which restored over 550 acres of wetland habitat at the southern end of Tomales Bay in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It was a gift to be part of the team that brought the wetlands back to life. The healing of the wetlands continues today at a pace beyond our hopes and is a source of pride for the local community, scientists and policy makers.
Most recently, I led a multi-year effort to increase the philanthropic support for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks as Executive Director of the Sequoia Parks Foundation, and I am currently consulting on the development of a new-model philanthropic entity that supports innovative projects in national parks throughout the west.
And now, I get to go to the Arctic. How cool is that?
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