Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation

Jen is the Program Officer for the Environment and the Family Advisory Board at the Compton Foundation. Her Environment portfolio covers grantmaking in the fields of fresh water, climate change, and community-based conservation in the western United States. She also manages a family grants program in sustainable food systems, youth, the arts, and spirituality. Jen has been working on sustainability issues for the past decade, with a focus on natural resource-based economies and collaborative decision-making. Prior to joining Compton, Jen worked on a variety of community-led projects in California, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest. She conducted post-doctoral research on sustainable food systems in northern California, and completed her PhD at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science,Policy and Management. Her academic research focused on contemporary collisions between environment and economy, particularly the processes of marketing, consumption, and investment that link natural resource industries to networks of urban capital. She received her BA from Stanford University in Human Biology (concentration in environmental policy) and English in 1994. She serves on the boards of the Switzer Foundation and the Pesticide Action Network North America, as well as on the advisory board for the Northern California Grassroots Fund.

Lisa is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She studies conservation policy and law, and is focusing her research on a resource that many consider to be the “lifeblood of the west”, water. Our burgeoning western cities are placing heavy demands on water resources, leading to conflicts with farmers, land, and wildlife. The situation will only worsen, as scientists predict that climate change will lead to less snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and more drought in the western U.S. Lisa is concerned that as demands on water intensify, ecosystem function will take a backseat to other uses. She is interested in studying past and present projects to acquire and protect instream flow water rights. She sees this strategy as an innovative solution that will protect riparian ecosystems in the long term. Prior to attending the School of Forestry, Lisa spent seven years working for the non-profit organization, Defenders of Wildlife. She spent the first half of that period in Washington, DC where she helped advocate for issues such as conservation on farm and ranchlands, organic agriculture, transportation planning, state planning for wildlife, and recovery of the Florida panther. For the last three years, Lisa was a grassroots organizer in New Mexico where she worked with a diverse range of groups including conservationists, hunters, fishermen, farmers, ranchers, faith-based communities, and tribal nations. She worked on national policies including the Farm Bill, climate change legislation, appropriations, and the U.S.Mexico border fence. She also worked on a variety of local issues including protection of the Valle Vidal, recovery of the Mexican wolf, and restoration of riparian systems including Comanche Creek. Lisa earned her B.S. from the University of Maryland in Environmental Science and Policy. After graduate school, she hopes to continue her career in the conservation policy field by either working for a legislative body, such as the U.S. Congress, or a non-profit advocacy organization.

Colleen is pursing a M.A. in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her interdisciplinary studies focus on transportation planning and environmental policy. Through her role as Manager of Air Quality Policy for the American Lung Association, Colleen advocates for policies that reduce air pollution and global warming emissions from the transportation and energy sectors. She collaborates on diverse coalitions to develop innovative solutions to environmental challenges. For example, she is a steering committee member of the coalition that won the landmark Clean Trucks Program (CTP) at the Port of Los Angeles. Before coming to the American Lung Association, she worked for the Center for Food and Justice, where she helped advance the Farm to School movement. Farm to School programs support local agriculture, reduce truck travel, and improve the health of children. She is a founding Board Member of the Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that sponsors research to raise awareness on environmental issues and inform policy making in Southern California. Colleen graduated from Occidental College with a B.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy, Phi Beta Kappa. She is an avid runner, hiker, and transit rider.

As a PhD candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Dartmouth College, Tom’s research examines the drivers of population decline in migratory wildlife. His dissertation focuses on understanding demographic variability and seasonal movement patterns of a declining wildebeest population in the Tarangire Ecosystem of Northern Tanzania. He became interested in East African conservation while working on a project studying elephant genetic relatedness in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, from 2002-2003. His thesis work involves a combination of computer-assisted individual identification of wildebeest, mark-recapture modeling, satellite-based remote sensing and getting out of muddy ditches. In 2008, he co-led an Earthwatch Institute project which brought over 40 volunteers to the Tarangire Ecosystem to assist with photo identification of wildebeest zebra and giraffe. In 2009, he successfully solicited local conservation organizations and hunting companies to fund and deploy six GPS collars that will be used to help characterize fine-scale movement patterns and larger-scale migratory pathways within the ecosystem. After finishing his PhD, he is committed to continuing to do research on wildlife in Tanzania through a combination of empirical analyses, theoretical modeling and advocacy. He hopes to advance a more-informed dialogue among Tanzania scientists and policy-makers about the conservation and future viability of migratory populations.