Something Is Right: Collaborative Leaders

Lisa Brush has been leading collaborative conservation initiatives in the nonprofit environmental sector for over two decades. In her role as co-founder and Executive Director of The Stewardship Network she has engaged thousands of professionals and volunteers in identifying community and conservation needs of the 21st century and determining strategic support The Network can provide. Lisa has facilitated strategic planning sessions, focus groups, citizen task forces, community visioning sessions, and public involvement and feedback meetings with groups ranging in size from four to four hundred. Lisa serves on numerous boards of directors, has a BA in Science in Society from Wesleyan University, an MS from University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and is a graduate of Michigan State University’s Great Lakes Leadership Academy.

Sharon Farrell is Executive Vice President of Projects, Stewardship & Science at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Sharon and her team lead the organization's project design and delivery, conservation initiatives, community science, restoration, and stewardship programs. This includes advancing opportunities for engaging partners, scientists and community members in research, monitoring and many aspects of land stewardship. Sharon also works closely with agency partners to oversee the One Tam Initiative, a community initiative to help ensure a healthy future for Mt. Tamalpais. Prior to joining the Parks Conservancy in 2004, Sharon was the Executive Director of the Watershed Project. Her work included capacity building for “Friends” groups, with a focus on partnership and fund development with municipalities and local governments. Sharon developed training and grants programs to support this work, and forged regional partnerships with other Bay Area non-profit organizations to support community-based stakeholder groups. Sharon has also worked as an ecologist and resource specialist with the National Park Service, a resource planner with the Presidio Trust, and as an environmental consultant. Sharon holds a MS in Park Management with emphasis on Ecological Restoration and Community Stewardship, and a BS in Chemistry. Sharon is an avid backpacker, nature photographer, and explorer. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in the East Bay with her wife Sue, their two children, and their dog, Marco. Together they are frequent hikers of the amazing landscapes on Mt. Tam, Point Reyes, and the Marin Headlands.

Kevin Wright is the Government Affairs Manager for Marin County Parks and Member of the Policy Committee and Steering Committee of the California Landscape Stewardship Network. Mr. Wright has a background in forestry and redwood ecology, active transportation planning, and partnership development. He is a Cultural Intelligence trainer at the County of Marin and participates on a Collaborating Well team focused on curriculum development for effective collaboration. His latest paper, Advancing Collaboration In California, describes aspects of California’s policy environment that support collaboration and makes recommendations for furthering regional stewardship approaches. Mr. Wright plays three prominent support roles in team settings: He helps to activate the ideas of others, brings humor and hard work, and challenges himself and team members to reconsider current ways of thinking and doing.

Shawn Johnson is Managing Director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and co-director of the Center’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution.  Shawn organizes and leads strategic planning and capacity building workshops for a wide variety of organizations focused on natural resource policy and management and has served as a facilitator and mediator on issues ranging from land use planning and forest management to conservation priority setting and regional collaboration. For the past ten years, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on regional collaboration and large landscape conservation. The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, and governance at regional or landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions. In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale -- the Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation. Shawn is co-author, with Matthew McKinney, of Working Across Boundaries: People, Nature, and Regions (Lincoln Institute, 2009). He also contributed to Large Landscape Conservation, A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action (Lincoln Institute, 2010) and Remarkable Beyond Borders: People and Landscapes in the Crown of the Continent (Sonoran Institute, 2010). Prior to his work at the Center, Shawn earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and spent three years as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.