Professional Background

For 25 years — first as Co-Director (and Planner, and Manager) of the Natural Resources Services Division at Redwood Community Action Agency, then as Director of Community Strategies and Senior Advisor at Humboldt Area Foundation — Jen directed work that closely mirrors what her consulting clients do today: regional planning and coordination, public engagement, multi-agency and Tribal collaboration, watershed restoration, funding development, and technical assistance to organizations and communities across Northwestern California. She brings that experience not as an outside expert, but as someone who directed and led these kinds of organizations, initiatives, and projects from the inside.

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At HAF, Jen served on the leadership team of a $180M community foundation — directing community-led change initiatives, building some of the region's most significant collaborative infrastructure, and grant-making. She brought partners together to build the True North Organizing Network, North Coast Equity Alliance, CORE Hub, and the region's first Community Organizations Active in Disaster network, each with dedicated Tribal working groups. She also led strategic planning and board and staff development work. 

 

At RCAA, she co-directed a team of 20-45 staff spanning community planning, collaborative policy development, active transportation, and watershed restoration — leading three strategic planning efforts to help the group evolve and keep up with rapidly evolving needs, and receiving an award from the California Chapter of the American Planning Association for innovative public engagement practices.

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Before that, Jen spent seven years with the U.S. Forest Service, Humboldt State University, and the National Park Service as a wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger, soil scientist, and invasive plant removal coordinator — work that gave her an ecologist's understanding of the landscapes and communities she now serves.

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Degrees in Organizational Development & Leadership (Fielding Graduate University) and Natural Resource Management (Cal Poly Humboldt) ground her work in both the human dynamics and the ecological and watershed science that matter in this region.​​​

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Why I Do This Work

I believe the highest form of care is helping anything — a person, an organization, a community, a system — become more fully itself. More capable. More effective. More just. More able to do what they, or it, set out to do.

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I grew up with the land and people who relate to it. Fighting fire, managing the backcountry, restoring watersheds — that work taught me about systems: that health isn't a destination, it's a continuous process of adaptation. Communities and organizations work the same way. The ones that thrive aren't the ones with the best plans. They're the ones that have learned how to learn and evolve together. And, we can't manage anything effectively, much less improve it, until we work together better. 

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What drives me most is the work that most people assume can't be done. Bringing together groups fractured by distrust, geography, or competing interests — and creating the conditions for them to discover what they actually share. I've watched conservative ranchers and progressive environmentalists find common ground. I've seen tribal leaders shape processes that had never made room for them before. I've been in rooms where the shift from skepticism to ownership is almost audible.

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That's where the magic happens — not in the plan, but in the people who now know they carry it.

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I am based in in Northwestern California because the communities, watersheds, and organizations here are deeply committed to navigating challenges that matter to all of us: wildfire, climate resilience, economic instability, the long overdue work of honoring Indigenous sovereignty. These aren't abstract policy questions. They're the lived reality of the people I work with every day.

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I consult because I want to work where the stakes are real and the leaders are willing to do something genuinely powerful — not because it's easier, but because they've decided that good enough isn't good enough anymore.​