Board

Rebecca Adamson, an Indigenous economist, is Founder and President of First Peoples Worldwide, the first US based global Indigenous Peoples NGO, which makes grants and provides technical assistance and advocacy directly to Indigenous-led development projects. Ms. Adamson has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities, both domestically and internationally, as an advocate of local tribal issues since 1970. She established the premiere US development institute, First Nations Development Institute, in 1980 and in 1997 she founded First Peoples Worldwide. Ms. Adamson’s work established the first microenterprise loan fund in the United States; the first tribal investment model; and, a national movement for reservation land reform. Her work established a new field of culturally appropriate, values-driven development, which led to legislation that established new standards of accountability regarding federal trust responsibility for Native Americans. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Bay and Paul Foundations and the Calvert Social Investment Fund. As a trustee of Calvert, Rebecca partnered with the Fund to create the first Indigenous Peoples’ rights investment screen in 1999, and led the creation of the Indigenous Rights Risk Report, the first quantitative assessment of corporate risk exposure to Indigenous Peoples’ rights, in 2014. In 2015 she has established three Shareholder Advocacy Leadership Training Centers located in Guatemala, Mexico and Canada as a new strategy for Indigenous leaders in addressing extractive industry on Indigenous territories. She was appointed as an advisor to the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Multi-Stakeholder Group, serving from 2014 to the present. She holds a Masters in Science in Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University (formerly New Hampshire College) in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she has taught a graduate course on Indigenous Economics within the Community Economic Development Program, and a Doctor in Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth College.

Mark Antoniewicz (he/him/his) is a strategic communications and stakeholder engagement specialist with a focus in sustainability, energy, and conservation. Over Mark’s 15-year professional career, he has been a change-agent and movement builder within the government, nonprofit, and corporate sectors. 

Mark is currently helping Google bolster their corporate leadership in energy and sustainability, leveraging its size and expertise to drive positive change. This includes helping build a movement to power the world’s electrical grids with 24/7 carbon-free energy, an imperative component to addressing global warming. 

Prior to helping Google, Mark served as the Director of Communications for Hip Hop Caucus, a national nonprofit that combines culture and policy to energize movements and empower communities impacted first and worst by injustice. While in this role, he conducted voter engagement in multiple election cycles and helped develop “Think 100%”, an award-winning multimedia climate justice platform focused on elevating the voices of young people and people of color.  

Mark moved to Hip Hop Caucus after serving two years as a political appointee within President Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality. As a member of the Public Engagement team, he helped diversify and mobilize stakeholder support for the administration’s historic commitment to protecting the environment and addressing climate change. Prior to the White House, Mark served in the Office of Small Business at the United States Department of Transportation, where his team worked to ensure that the nation’s small, minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses had opportunities to succeed within the transportation industry. Mark is a proud native of Madison, Wisconsin, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Connecticut. His favorite places to be are out in nature with his family and on the basketball court. Follow Mark on Twitter @M4RK4NTONIEWICZ and on LinkedIn.

Julie Gorte is Senior Vice President for Sustainable Investing at Impax Asset Management LLC, the North American division of Impax Asset Management Group and investment adviser to Pax World Funds. She oversees environmental, social and governance-related research on prospective and current investments as well as the firm’s shareholder engagement and public policy advocacy. Julie is also a member of the Impax Gender Analytics team. Prior to joining the firm, Julie served as Vice President and Chief Social Investment Strategist at Calvert. Her experience before she joined the investment world in 1999 includes various roles. Julie spent nearly 14 years as Senior Associate and Project Director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Additionally, she has held the roles of Vice President for Economic and Environmental Research at The Wilderness Society, and Program Manager for Technology Programs in the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy office and Senior Associate at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

Julie serves on the boards of the Endangered Species Coalition, E4theFuture, Clean Production Action and is the board chair of the Sustainable Investments Institute. Julie received a Ph.D. and Master of Science in resource economics from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Science in forest management at Northern Arizona University.

 

Susan Holmes coordinates Wildlands Network’s U.S. federal policy and government affairs work in Washington, D.C. She promotes legislation and policies designed to protect wildlife habitat and corridors, endangered species and landscape connectivity across America. As part of this work, she leads the Connectivity Policy Coalition—a nationwide coalition of organizations dedicated to advancing policy solutions related to wildlife connectivity—as well as the conservation community’s efforts to pass the federal Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act. Susan has long been passionate about protecting wildlands and wildlife. She combines a love of advocacy with expertise in media, government, and the workings of Capitol Hill. After graduating from Dartmouth College, she developed environmental programs at Columbia University. She then went on to work with the Sierra Club, where she campaigned to protect the Great Bear Rainforest, Adirondacks and other wild places. During her decade-long stint as Senior Legislative Representative for Earthjustice, she defended wildlife and the Endangered Species Act. Prior to joining Wildlands Network she was the Washington, D.C. representative for the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

Adrienne L. Hollis is the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In that role, she leads the development, design, and implementation of methods for accessing and documenting the health impacts of climate change on communities of color and other traditionally disenfranchised groups. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Hollis served as the director of federal policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice and taught at the George Washington University Milken School of Public Health and the American University Washington College of Law. She has more than 20 years of extensive experience in the environmental arena, particularly focused on environmental justice, equity and inclusion, and the adverse health effects of environmental exposures and climate change on vulnerable communities, as an associate professor in public health, and as an environmental toxicologist and an environmental attorney. She is a member of numerous organizations and boards, including the EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, the National Adaptation Forum’s Steering Committee (co-chair) and its Equity Working Group, the American Public Health Association’s Environment Section and Environmental Justice Subcommittee, the Endangered Species Coalition (general counsel) and the Green Leadership Trust. She earned a BS in biology from Jackson State University, a PhD in biomedical sciences from Meharry Medical College, a JD from Rutgers University School of Law, and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard University School of Public Health.

She earned a BS in biology from Jackson State University, a PhD in biomedical sciences from Meharry Medical College, a JD from Rutgers University School of Law, and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard University School of Public Health. Dr. Hollis hails from Mobile, Alabama.

David Inouye is an ecologist and conservation biologist, retired from teaching at the University of Maryland, but still active in his long-term research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (at 9,500′ in Colorado). 2022 is his 52nd year working there, mostly on wildflowers and pollinators, and the effects of climate change on their phenology and interactions (research supported by the National Science Foundation). David works with hummingbirds, now by helping as the bander for two research groups looking at their vision, flower-visiting behavior, beak morphology, and genetics; last summer he banded about 300, of 4 different species. David also has some long-term (since 1973) projects on plant demography, following individually tagged plants in an annual census. He has also done a lot of work with bumblebees. David serves on the Boards of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and a local NGO (Citizens for a Healthy Community) that is focused on keeping oil and gas drilling out of our watershed (valley of the North Fork of the Gunnison River), which has the largest concentration of organic farms, vineyards, and orchards in the state. He serves as a reviewer, a few times a year, for National Science Foundation panels, reviews a lot of articles for scientific journals, is a member of the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission’s working group on biological resources, a member of the Colorado 7th Judicial District Nominating Commission, and is part of a working group funded by the USDA to establish a new national monitoring program for native bees. David enjoys photography, white-water rafting (rowing a raft through the Grand Canyon for 21 days in March 2022), backpacking, bicycling, and growing and harvesting most of the food that we eat.
Lisa Jaguzny is Senior Program Director at the Biodiversity Funders Group and oversees the Land and Freshwater and Marine Conservation Programs. After a long career in leadership roles in various sectors of the conservation community, she brings her deep knowledge of conservation together with her love of convening to activate funders to accelerate policy change. Before coming to BFG, she recently led Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center, where she transformed the 240 acre farm into a force for promoting climate resilient practices through regenerative agriculture and environmental stewardship. Prior to Oxbow, Lisa led the Campion Foundation where she served as CEO for nearly 10 years and created the Campion Advocacy Fund, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit focused on protecting US public lands and fostering indigenous-led campaigns to protect Alaska’s lands and waters. Lisa served as Deputy Director for People For Puget Sound for 11 years, during which time she led the campaign that resulted in the protection of more than 1,000 miles of Puget Sound shorelines. Lisa has served as a Board Member for the Western Conservation Foundation and the Biodiversity Funders Group. She holds a BA from Trinity College, and an Executive MBA Certificate from Stanford University’s Center for Social Innovation.
Stephanie Kurose is Senior Endangered Species Policy Specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity where she develops policy and advocacy strategies to protect our nation’s most imperiled animals and plants and the wild places they live. As part of this work, she engages with Congress and the administration to secure stronger protections for endangered species and their habitats, assists in litigation to secure protections for threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and educates the public on threats to wildlife and biodiversity. She earned her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law, and a Masters in Global Environmental Policy from American University School of International Service. Her favorite critters are the monarch butterfly and the pangolin, and her favorite flowers are dahlias. In her spare time, she loves to read, garden, and work on her family’s farm in Connecticut where they raise chickens and honeybees.

Lori Udall has over 25 years of experience in international and domestic environmental policy, indigenous rights, and governance and public accountability of international development institutions. In 1967, her father, Stewart Udall—as Secretary of Interior—issued the first endangered species list under the Endangered Species Preservation Act. His list included such great American icons as the timber wolf, red wolf, bald eagle, grizzly bear, American alligator, and the peregrine falcon. Lori continues the family legacy work on endangered species. She is currently President of Montpelier Consulting, LLC, and Program Director for Sacharuna Foundation which focuses on land conservation, endangered species, sustainable agriculture, and indigenous rights and livelihoods. Sacharuna has supported campaigns around the gray wolf, African elephant, and the Hawaiian monk seal. Lori previously worked with First Nations Development Institute, International Rivers Network, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Udall has an M.C.L. from George Washington University, an L.L.M. from Downing College, Cambridge, England, and a B.A. from George Mason University.

Story Warren is a recent graduate of the University of Montana, earning a B.S. in Wildlife Biology. She grew up in Washington State with a love of the outdoors. Upon seeing her first wild wolves in Yellowstone at age six, her love of wolves and wildlife was sparked. She began testifying before state and federal wildlife commissions as a young teen, advocating for consideration of the perspectives of young people and future generations in wildlife conservation policy decisions. In 2012, following the death of famous Yellowstone wolves “06” and 754M, she began the social media campaign “Kids4Wolves” to educate young people about wolf conservation, behavior, and ecology, as well as to get students and young people involved in the political process governing wolf and wildlife conservation. For this endeavor, Story earned the President’s Environmental Youth Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

Story has studied and monitored a Washington wolf pack since 2014 using tracking and trail cameras, following the lives of the family and individual wolves for over seven years. During her college years, she spent three summers doing field work for the wolf programs of state fish and wildlife agencies. She spent the summer of 2021 as a Demmer Scholar in Washington, D.C., learning about the intersection of natural resources and federal policy, and working as an intern for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s government relations team. Story is passionate about conserving biodiversity, ethical wildlife conservation, and getting young people involved in the wildlife policymaking process.

Wolf in Yellowstone in snowy environment with forested background
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