Podcasts about conservation alliance

Today on the show we start by helping to break the news about Brands For Public Lands, a coalition of outdoor industry businesses who are speaking up on behalf of our sacred public spaces. Colin is joined by the Executive Director of The Conservation Alliance, Paul Hendricks, who gives the background on this new coalition, how it came together, and what will happen next. Then Mountain Gazette's Kyle Frost returns to The Rock Fight. Last weeks edition of Kyle's newsletter, Here & There, discussed partisanship in nature. He and Colin dig into the examples Kyle offered that show we are not always united when it comes to outdoor conversations. They also talk about the current tariff situation and get Kyle's point of view from an American currently living abroad.To learn more about participating in Brands For Public Lands click here. Subscribe to Here & There by clicking here or by subscribing to Mountain Gazette.Check out hundreds of wildly cool products by visiting and shopping at Garage Grown Gear!Register For Obōz Trails For Tree Challenge at trailsfortrees.com. Thanks for listening! The Rock Fight is a production of Rock Fight, LLC. Sign up for NEWS FROM THE FRONT, Rock Fight's weekly newsletter by heading to www.rockfight.co and clicking Join The Mailing List.Please follow and subscribe to The Rock Fight and give us a 5 star rating and a written review wherever you get your podcasts.Want to pick a fight with The Rock Fight? Send your feedback, questions, and comments to myrockfight@gmail.com.

Episode 11 with Wes Carter, President of Atlantic Packaging and Founder of A New Earth Project.In this episode we are getting curious about packaging. Every single thing we own has been packaged somewhere along the line and the amount of energy and resources needed to make that packaging is astronomical – worse still nearly 50% of plastic waste actually comes from packaging – but, there are solutions. Joining us from North Carolina is the President of Atlantic Packaging and the Founder of A New Earth Project, Wes Carter.GUEST BIO:Wes Carter is the third-generation leader of Atlantic Packaging, the largest privately owned industrial packaging company in North America. Atlantic supports major consumer products packaging needs across virtually every manufacturing vertical, specializing in packaging optimization through technology and comprehensive programs to drive sustainable value. Today, as the president of Atlantic Packaging, Wes is the driving force behind A New Earth Project, the company's sustainability initiative, and its commitment to working with brands of all sizes to transition away from problematic plastic packaging and help rid the world's oceans, lakes, and rivers of plastic pollution.Wes is an avid outdoorsman, lifelong surfer, and traveler who resides in Charleston, South Carolina. He serves on the Board of Directors for The Conservation Alliance, the Packaging Producer Responsibility Advisory Board, the Lowcountry Land Trust Board, and the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Visitors in addition to other local and regional organizations fighting the waste crisis.HELPFUL LINKS:www.instagram.com/wesmcarterwww.instagram.com/anewearthprojectwww.instagram.com/becurious_podcastwww.atlanticpkg.comwww.anewearthproject.comWatch "Journey to A New Earth" on Amazon PRIMELinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wes-carter-32a7a5b/CREDITS:The BE CURIOUS PODCAST is brought to you by ECODA MEDIAHost: Louise HoughtonProduction by: Deviants MediaProducer: Louise HoughtonAssistant Producer: Marta WagnerAssistant Producer: Ralph CortezMotion Graphics: Josh Dage

Today on THE ROCK FIGHT (an outdoor podcast that aims for the head) it's time to bust out the headlines!Come along as Colin & Justin run through the more notable stories to come out of the outdoor industry and community including the following:More with Thermore! (04:57)A new article on Outside Online says that fireworks should be banned (11:45)The Conservation Alliance welcomes seven fishing brands to it's roster of outdoor companies (21:30)Paddling Magazine lists out everything you need to know about e-SUP's (30:36)Head to www.rockfight.co and sign up for News From the Front, Rock Fight's weekly newsletter!Please follow and subscribe to THE ROCK FIGHT and give us a 5 star rating and written review wherever you get your podcasts.Have a question or comment for a future mailbag episode? Send it to myrockfight@gmail.com or send a message on Instagram or Threads.Thanks for listening! THE ROCK FIGHT is a production of Rock Fight, LLC.

On this episode we welcome Jack Karlin, the Program Administrator for the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance. Learn about the TWCA and drought tolerant grass seed.Download our FREE Guides- Spring Lawn Guide & What Grass Is Best For Me from our website!Want to stay connected? Join our email list on our website for podcast reminders, featured discounted swag, lawn tips and more! Recieve 10% OFF your entire order of grass seed at twincityseed.com when you use code LAWNFEED10 and be sure to pair it with the code for free shipping located in the top banner of their website.Receive 15% OFF your entire order at weigh-safe.com when you use code TLF15. Weigh-Safe has the only trailer hitches on the market with built in scales to measure tongue weight. Keep everyone on the road safe with Weigh-Safe!WebsiteInstagramTikTokFacebookYouTube

The post June 5, 2024: Selkirk Conservation Alliance appeared first on KRFY Radio.

This episode features Ryan Bigelow, the Director of Projects for the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions. He discusses the seafood industry, the alliance's role, and the importance of conservation. From consumer to industry perspectives, the conversation delves into the challenges of sustainable seafood practices. Tune in to learn about the Seafood Watch program and how to make informed seafood choices for a better ocean. Website: https://solutionsforseafood.org/ The Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions is dedicated to improving sustainability in the seafood industry by fostering collaboration between NGOs and businesses. With approximately 150 members from 22 countries worldwide, the Alliance works towards enhancing the sustainability of seafood. It serves as a platform for experts from various organizations to address key topics such as improving fisheries, social responsibility in seafood, and advancing sustainability efforts. One of the primary functions of the Alliance is to provide guidance and resources for businesses seeking to enhance their sustainability practices in the seafood industry. By closely collaborating with NGOs and businesses, the Alliance aims to ensure all stakeholders are aligned in promoting sustainable seafood practices. The organization also facilitates discussions, collaborations, and the sharing of best practices to drive positive change within the industry. Through initiatives like Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs), the Alliance supports fisheries in their journey towards sustainability by setting goals and timelines for improvement. Additionally, the Alliance places a strong emphasis on social responsibility within the seafood industry, addressing issues such as human rights violations, unsafe working conditions, and gender inequity. By integrating social responsibility considerations into sustainability efforts, the Alliance recognizes the interconnected nature of environmental and social issues within the seafood supply chain. The Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions plays a crucial role in promoting sustainability and responsible practices in the seafood industry by fostering collaboration, providing guidance, and advocating for the integration of social responsibility principles into sustainability initiatives. The Alliance for Seafood Solutions, led by Director of Projects Ryan Bigelow, provides essential guidance on various seafood industry topics, with a focus on sustainable seafood practices. Working with a diverse group of NGOs and businesses, the Alliance aims to improve global sustainability standards. This guidance is vital for businesses looking to enhance their sustainability efforts and align with industry standards. Additionally, the Alliance actively supports fishery improvement projects (FIPs) to address environmental and social issues within fisheries, such as overfishing. By providing guidance on participating in FIPs, the Alliance helps fisheries progress towards sustainable practices. Another significant aspect of the Alliance's work is addressing social responsibility in fisheries, including human rights violations and unsafe working conditions. The Alliance emphasizes integrating social responsibility into seafood sustainability efforts to ensure these issues are addressed alongside environmental concerns. The Alliance collaborates with industry stakeholders, NGOs, and experts to develop comprehensive guidance documents that address the complex challenges faced by the seafood industry. By bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise, the Alliance promotes responsible and ethical practices in the seafood supply chain. Building trust with industry partners is a crucial aspect of the Alliance's work. By collaborating with businesses in the seafood industry, the Alliance promotes sustainability and addresses social responsibility issues. Active listening, collaboration, and providing valuable resources without immediate financial expectations are key strategies to build trust and engage effectively with industry partners towards shared goals.

We delve into the powerful collaboration between Flickr, The Conservation Alliance, Rivian, and others!

Beijing, China - the world's largest capital city was once the traditional habitat of the magnificent North Chinese leopard. Pushed out from Beijing, these leopards today live in the Taihung mountains in the south west of the capital, however an ambitious project from the China Felid Conservation Alliance seeks to bring these leopards back home to Beijing. Across successive generations, these leopards are gradually migrating north towards Beijing. But if they succeed in reaching the city, is it prepared to welcome its new wild neighbours? Guest Huang Qiaowen, China Felid Conservation Alliance

We've got some exciting news to share regarding conservation! Listen in and stay tuned for more.

Melissa Fifield, Head of the BMO Climate Institute, sat down with Conor McElyea to discuss how The Conservation Alliance is working to “protect wild places and outdoor spaces.”

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. An Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values (2022): https://theapsocietyorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/an-atheopagan-declaration-of-policy-values-2022.final_.pdf S4E30 TRANSCRIPT:   Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark. Yucca: And today, we're talking about religion and politics. Mark: Yes, but don't turn it off. Yucca: Yes, we were saying, what should we call this? What should we call this? But no, this is, this is important. This is what we're going to talk about. And there's a lot to say here. But today it was inspired because, Mark, you just got back from a trip, which you got to do some pretty cool politicking. Mark: Yes I went to Washington, D. C. as a part of a fly in delegation by the Conservation Alliance, and I'll tell some of those stories later advocating for protections for public lands, including the designation of some new national monuments. So, I, as I said, I'll, I'll talk about that stuff later but yeah, just got back from a lobby trip, Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that... It is very common to hear in pagan circles, and I think probably not just pagan circles, but a lot of new age things and kind of, mini counterculture sorts of groups, is, you know, don't bring politics. into this, right? Don't, don't bring politics into my religion. Don't, you know, we, we aren't going to talk about that. We're not going to be this is separate, right? Let's be, let's be off in our realm or our magical experience and leave that other stuff out. Mark: right? And there is so much to be said about that. I mean, it has a nexus with toxic positivity. This idea that, you know, we should only talk about happy, shiny stuff, and that, you know, we're going to have this nice, warm, glowy, serotonin oxytocin experience by doing our, our spirituality, and we're just not going to engage with anything that doesn't stimulate that. It has to do with the toxicity that we see in the societies around us where the mainstream religions are engaging with public policy and they're doing it for really destructive and antisocial reasons. And so that becomes sort of the poster child for why you wouldn't want you to have politics in your spiritual space. But a lot of it, in my opinion, is simply... We don't want to think about any of those issues because they might bring us down. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. But, and there's just so much to say because there's, it's going to depend on every different kind of situation but I think that if we think about the values that We often claim to have that we value the earth, that we think the earth is sacred. You know, we may have different interpretations on, you know, whether divinity is involved with that or not, but hey, we're agreeing, we think that the earth is important, we're agreeing about believing that love and freedom and all of these things are important, then I think that... If we really believe that, then we have a responsibility to those things. Mark: Yes, yes, we it's because they won't happen by themselves. You know, there are interests which are destructive interests and are not filled with love and are not about advancing liberty and are not about supporting the biosphere in a manner which is consistent with biodiversity and with the sustaining of humanity. And they're out there advocating for their stuff every day. And if we absent ourselves from the process because we think that it is too negative or too gross or too demoralizing, then we are leaving the field to those who would do us harm. And it's just not, there is no logic to it that makes sense to me, other than at the most sort of Self indulgent, I just want to feel good for me kind of place, where it makes sense to say, I'm not going to vote, I'm not going to advocate for what I care about, I'm not going to be interested in any kind of activism. I mean, everybody's circumstances Yucca: become informed about it, Mark: right. Yucca: right? Mark: Everybody's circumstances are different, and not everybody can be a big activist, right? You know, if you're, you know, you're raising kids, or, and you're, you know, scraping by, and, you know, there's a lot of different, I mean, poverty is a social control strategy. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, it is, it is one way that people who have the common good at heart are kept limited in the amount of power that they have. So let's, let's not mince words about that. But even with the limitations that we have, I have always felt that it was my responsibility to do what I can to try to advance the values that matter to me. And I'm pleased to say that the community that's grown up around atheopaganism is very much the same way. We're gonna, we're gonna put a Link in the show notes to the Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values, which came out last year and was developed by the community with tons of community input and editing and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: There was a lot of back and forth and lots and lots of people participating and, you know, wording things just for, it was quite inspiring, actually. Mm hmm, Mark: the level, level of collaboration with the minimal amount of argument was very inspiring to me. And so now we have this document, and it can be downloaded from the Atheopagan Society website. So we're going to put the link in the, in the show notes so you can download that. But that's an example of the community speaking out on issues that really matter to us, and saying, this is where we stand. This is what our activism is going to be built around. This is, you know, we... We embrace LGBTQ people. We do. And it's not just, it's not just You know, so called virtue signaling, we genuinely do, we want those folks, we want people of color, we want indigenous people in our community, you know, we want them to be safe, we want them to be seen, we want them to be heard as, as an example. And similarly, along the environmental axis, along the axis of personal liberty and autonomy, bodily autonomy, all of those you know, the importance of critical thinking and science all of those pieces are a part of what our movement is about. And so, when we talk with the public, That is, that is core to what we express. Yes, we're here for happiness. We're here for people to feel good. We're all for that. But as one of the atheopagan principles says, you know, responsibility, social responsibility is one of our principles. Yucca: right. Mark: It is an obligation that we have. Yucca: And so those values, they're not just about talking about them, they're about, those are what inform the choices that we're making. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And being able to reflect on what those are, right? is really important. Have conversations about that, because we're not, there's going to be nuance, right? We're not always going to see eye to eye on things, and being able to, as individuals, talk about that with each other, and as a community, be able to, to talk about that and, and, you know, have that conversation is really important. Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we learn from one another, right? I mean, that's a really important piece because As strongly as I feel on a value level about supporting people of color in the LBGTQI plus community I'm not one of either of those groups. And so I have to listen a lot in order to understand, well, what is an appropriate statement to make in support, right? How do I show up as an ally and as and as an advocate? Or a supporter for their advocacy, you know. So, you know, it's not as simple as just having a laundry list of policy positions. And it has to also recognize that we live in a world of subtle differences. Right? Subtle gradations of change throughout the whole natural world, and that includes humanity. So, I get really kind of bent sideways when I hear the lesser of two evils, or I'm not going to vote for that person because of this one little position, when the alternative is so much worse on every position. The best analogy that I've heard is that voting isn't dating, it's selecting, it's selecting the best possible option off of the available menu. And the available menu only includes people that actually have a chance of getting elected. It's not just some fringe outlier who tells you what you want to hear. Yucca: mhm, Mark: that can actually get into a position to make change in a positive direction. Yucca: mhm, mhm, mhm. Mark: So, we had a bunch of stuff on the outline for this podcast. What else have you got? Yucca: Well, certainly the, the issue of privilege is definitely Mark: Oh, yeah  Yucca: and this is something that I think comes up where people will be unaware of the place of privilege that they may be coming from to be able to say, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want this coming into, you know, my religion or my, anything about that, because that, that isn't the position that most people are going to be in that situation, right? Yeah. Mm Mark: Yeah the, I think the clearest way to express that is that if you have the luxury of saying, Oh, I don't want to vote that just encourages them, or I'm not going to consider any of those issues because I just want to be on my, you know, spiritual path of lightness and joy thing. Is that people that are marginalized and endangered by the way our society operates, they don't have the luxury to do that. If you look at voting rates, for example, African American women vote astronomically in high proportions in the United States. And the reason for that is that the interests of the community that they are in are, are, are stark. The, you know, the threats that certain people like a Donald Trump and the people that he brings with him present to that community are so real. They're not, they're not theoretical. It's not just something where, where as a white person, you look at it and go, Oh, gee, that's too bad. This is life and death for them. And they turn out to vote. They're organized. They're knowledgeable. You know, these are people who are, are leveraging the power that they have absolutely as much as they can. And when I hear people say, you know, oh, well, I'm not going to vote because blah, blah, blah. What I, what I really hear is, I am so cushioned from the impacts of the policies that get made by people that I don't... Agree with in theory that I can just skate on this and ride on, on the, the, the privilege that I enjoy in the society in order to avoid having to deal with something that I might find icky. Yucca: yeah, I'm being served by the system, fundamentally. Yeah. Mark: So, you know, I'll give an example. It's like, an argument can be made that the certain proportion of people who in, in key states who supported Bernie Sanders, And then refused to vote for Hillary Clinton may have given us Donald Trump. It's not that they had to agree with everything that Hillary Clinton said because they didn't, I didn't. But the appointees that she was going to make, the appointees to the Supreme Court, the appointees to the, the cabinet positions, the appointees to federal judgeships. All of those things were going to be head and shoulders above any of the things that Trump ended up doing. And it's painful to say, but those people needed to look at the big picture and go and vote for Hillary Clinton. And they didn't. And it's that, it's that, that sense of privilege, that sense of it not mattering that much that I really think needs to be interrogated on the left. And I am on the left, right, but I'm on the left that seeks to achieve progress because I'm a progressive, and progress happens in incremental steps most of the time. Progress isn't a home run. Progress is a base hit, and electing Hillary Clinton would have been a base hit on the way towards achieving better policies. And instead, we have what we have. So, you know, and I realize that there are going to be people that are going to be fuming when they hear me say this but seriously, look at the playing board, and look at what we got, and You know, think about, well, what does this mean for the next election? Where, where should I be putting my support? Yucca: Hmm, yeah definitely was not expecting that, I was not prepared for that direction of the conversation. That's something that I would have to really think a lot on. I understand some of the sentiment behind it, but I would want to look more at some of the numbers. And some of the assumptions about who is entitled to what vote, and whether those, I think that there's a lot to that situation, and I don't feel comfortable, I mean, you certainly have the opinion that you want, but necessarily agreeing and and um humming without really looking at that particular situation. I think that there's a lot that was going on there. But I've certainly heard that argument a lot, and one of the things that I have been uncomfortable with is, and I'm not saying that you're saying this, but this is something that I have heard often, is the sense of entitlement of those people's votes. That, you know, somehow this party was entitled to people's votes. What about... So, you know, do the numbers actually work out of how many Democrats voted Republican in that situation versus how many Independents voted one direction or the other? I think that there's a lot to really look into there. Mark: Sure, sure. And I have looked into it some. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I should be clear, I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton deserved anybody's vote, or was entitled to everybody's, to anybody's vote. I'm saying she deserved them from a strategic standpoint. Yucca: hmm. Mark: That when you look at the playing field, And what was the right next move, that that was the right next move. And in certain states like Wisconsin there were, there were enough votes that dropped off. That the argument can be made, but, but let's, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: let's make the whole thing abstract, okay? Rather than talking about that, that election in specific, let's talk about elections generally. When you have a situation where somebody who you agree with 50 percent is running against somebody who is agreeing with you 10%, And then there's somebody out there who agrees with you 100%, but they have no ability to be elected. And it's clear Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I need to go for the 50 percent because, again, I'm a progressive. So I want to see things advance, even if they're going to go a lot slower than I want them to go. Yucca: Right, well I think in some of that case it's going to depend on what are the particular changes that, and what are the things that you are placing at highest priority, right? And if one of the things that you're placing at high priority is trying to do something about the monopoly, then that the two parties have, I can see the logic of making a different choice there. But I think that the point, I think the point where we probably agree is that when you're voting, it's something to be very strategic about. It's to look at what is the situation where you are and what are the possible outcomes and thinking about You know, what are the values that you are, that you are fighting for in that case, right? What are they, right? Mark: and the key takeaway that I would, that I would leave this particular rabbit hole with is that not to vote is to vote. If you don't vote, you are Yucca: is voting, yeah. Mark: It is voting. So it is you know, you, you don't get away with your hands clean just because you don't vote, right? You, you bear a responsibility for election outcomes just like everybody else does. And that's a really important thing for people in democracies to understand. And I'll talk a little bit later on about democracy and the degree to which we have it and all that good kind of stuff. Yucca: And This is just one area, right? This is an area that we happen to be talking about because this is an area where, where this is something that there's some strong opinions on, and this is an area where people do have influence, but of course there's a lot of other things. As well, in terms of you know, commercial choices and lifestyle choices and all of that kind of stuff that we can but one thing I really want to highlight, and you touched on this a little bit before, but I think it really deserves its own section of the podcast as well, is that being able to spend large amounts of time on these issues is a form of privilege itself too, right? And this is not something that everyone has. And you don't have to be guilty and beat yourself up and you're not a bad pagan because you've got to do a 9 to 5 plus your two side jobs to even be able to Barely make rent, right? That's not, so we're not sitting here saying, oh, shame on, you're failing because you're not fighting oil rigs in the, you know, gulf and how come you're out there? Like, that's not what we're saying at all. And I think that it's really, really important to think about and balance in our lives the self care component. And, that sometimes, yes, it's, sometimes it is okay to just have your celebration and to not necessarily be talking about, you know, let's raise money for this, this particular candidate at this time, or something like that, but know that it does, that this stuff does have a place in the community, it is important, but it isn't, The, you don't have to be doing it all the time, if that's not what your, what your mental health needs. Mark: No, no, definitely not. And it's important for those of us that have the privilege to be able to engage the system in that way, either from the outside or the inside, that we recognize that privilege and use it. Right? You know, those of us that have the bandwidth, those of us who have You know, the thick enough skin and that have the energy and sometimes the money even just to travel, to go somewhere. I mean, the trip that I just took, I didn't pay for because otherwise I wouldn't have gone, right? But but it's, it's, that kind of privilege is very visible. It's like, The D. C. is a very, very African American town. It's a very Black town. Lots and lots of Black folks, and, until you get into the Congressional buildings, and there it whitens up considerably Yucca: Mm Mark: with the lobbyists and the, you know, the constituents that are going not, not universally, of course but noticeably, and it is incumbent upon those of us who have been there. The privilege to be able to engage, to do what we can to improve justice, and to speak for the things that we care about so that they can advance. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So, I could talk about my trip. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, you were just talking about D. C., so, Mark: Okay, well. So, I got sent on a fly in with the Conservation Alliance, which is a consortium of businesses which was originally founded by REI, the North Face Peak Design, and Patagonia. And they came together to create a unified voice for speaking up for the outdoors, for for wild lands and outdoor recreation. That was a long time ago, and now they have 270 businesses from a variety of different sectors, and what they do every couple of years is they gather a bunch of the leaders of those businesses along with, and they make grants, right? They pool their money and they make grants to organizations that are doing organizing and advocacy for the issues that they care about, and the organization I work for, Cal Wild, is one of those. Yucca: mm hmm. So that's how you were able to go on this trip? Mark: Yes, CalWild was invited to send a representative, and I was selected to go, and so I went. This is not the first time that I've been to Washington to lobby, but the last time was in the 90s. So it's been a while. And everything has changed, of course. I mean, technology has changed everything, and 9 11 has changed all the security. So, it's, it's just a completely different experience. So, so I went and I was going to speak on to, as a grantee, to speak as a content expert about the positions that we're trying to advance. My organization right now is working very hard. for the creation of three new national monuments in California. My organization is limited to California, so that's why, you know, that. But we're also advocating for some policy changes at the administration level, which would affect the whole of the United States. And I should say, you know, we're talking a lot about kind of American politics in this podcast, but if you have a representative democracy of any kind, the things that we're talking about are really applicable to you too. Yucca: Right. Yeah, we're just talking about our experience with our Mark: the stuff we know about. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the idea here is not to get everybody all plugged into American politics. It's to use that as an example of what citizen participation or resident participation looks like and why it's important. I go on this trip and I go to Washington and I meet with the team and we have a training briefing and all that kind of thing, and my take, we, on the first day, I had two meetings with administration offices with the Department of the Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality of the White House now when we're meeting with staff, we're not meeting with the people that are in charge in those agencies, we probably would have met with the Secretary of the Interior, but it's Climate Week in North Northern New York, so she was away at Climate Week, Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so, and there was something going on with the Department of Environmental Quality such that we had the staffer that we had. But these are sharp, smart, influential people that we're talking to, and the sense that I got, and then the second day we had meetings with California delegation members both to the Senate and to the House of Representatives, including my congressman which I had a very interesting experience with talking to my congressman's office in Washington, so I'll get to that in a minute. Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: The main takeaway that I got from, especially from meeting with the administration, was that they want to do what we want them to do. Their, their hearts are in the right place. And they are delighted that we are coming to Washington and talking to people, and organizing on the ground in local communities, because they need the political cover to be able to do what we want them to do. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And in that Yucca: like that's charging them up, right? They want to do it, but they need to be charged with the power of the people. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Exactly so. And... It gives them something to point to when opponents say, we don't want that, Yucca: Mm Mark: right, they can, you know, they can point to the organizing that my organization is doing and say, well, the people in the community who live right next door want it, you know, the elected officials of the county where the expansion of the National Monument is proposed, they want it. So, You know, those are their representatives and they elected them to office to make those decisions, so why shouldn't we do this? So it's really important to be doing that kind of community organizing and talking to other people about the things that you care about in a, you know, in a focused way. So that was really gratifying to me because, of course, American democracy has taken a beating over the last 20 years, but it's still functioning. Thank you. The elections are kind of messed up, and we could certainly do without gerrymandering and and all the dark money, and I could go on, but as well as the occasional insurrection, which I really, really think we could do without. I walked Yucca: that's not an, let's have that be a singular thing, please. Mark: yes. I walked several times, because the house office buildings and the senatorial office buildings are on opposite sides of the capitol. I walked back and forth in front of where the insurrection took place a bunch of times. And there it is, you know, large is life. And, you know, there are the windows they broke, that's how they got in, you know, there's where they hung their banners, you know, all that. So, that said it was encouraging to see that at least under this administration, There was a commitment to listening to constituents and to hearing, you know, they were very appreciative of the businesses that were represented there, you know, in, you know, speaking up on behalf of protecting public lands so that their ecological values last forever, their recreational opportunities there, all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Actually, is that something you can, I know that we're talking kind of more process here, but for a moment, you were, talking about trying to get more national monuments. Why are those important? Mark: Oh, good. Very, very good question. My organization focuses on conservation of wild lands on public lands. And a lot of Yucca: you keep going, can you define conservation? Because that is a term that has a lot of different baggage attached to it. So what do you mean when you say conservation? Mark: man protection of the land so that it will not be developed in certain ways. And management of the land for the resource, for the benefit of the resources that are there, of the ecological resources, cultural resources in some cases historical resources, and recreational opportunities for people to go camping or hiking or whatever that might be. So, one... One misapprehension that many Americans have is the idea that public land is protected land. And it is not. Most public land in the United States is owned by the Bureau of Land Management or by the U. S. Forest Service. And those have been managed primarily for extractive purposes like logging and mining and Yucca: Oil is big Mark: and oil exploration. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah, very big. So we're advocating for chunks. of undeveloped land to be protected in perpetuity and managed for the benefit of those values. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That's what a national monument does. Or a National Wilderness Area, which is declared by Congress. We're not asking for a National Wilderness Area in the areas we're focusing on because Congress is broken, and there's no way to get anything through it. the President can use the National Antiquities Act to declare a national monument. He can do that on his own. Yucca: So, by taking , these areas, you're setting aside, you're allowing ecosystems to stay intact, right? So that you can have the populations of these animals and plants or whatever. Particular kind of species you're looking at, they have a place to be, they can continue to play the roles that they would play in a hopefully healthy system and to help manage for that, Mark: Right, and that helps us to accomplish a couple of important things, one of which is, you know, we have a biodiversity crash problem, you know, the, the biodiversity of the earth is the, which is the number of different species and the number of individuals of those species are both on a steep decline. Having habitat is necessary in order for, you know, organization, organisms to live. And but not only that, this is a very interesting one. One of the things that we're advocating for is the expansion of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mark: And the reason for that is that because of climate change, Joshua trees are migrating out of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: Interesting. Mark: Over time, they're moving north because it's too hot Yucca: Because it's warm. Yeah. Okay. Mark: Yeah. So, it... Protecting these areas also enables the natural systems of the earth to do what they do in terms of adaptation, right? So, there's a place for the Joshua trees to go as the southernmost of them die because of excessive heat, and conditions become better for them outside of the park to the north. So that's just one example.  Yucca: And may I add that we of course want to protect these for simply the innate value of that being , has any right, as much right to be there as we do. But they also, the functioning system performs ecosystem functions, which is like cleaning the water and the air that we all breathe. So it's, it's not just that, oh, we like there being lots of animals and plants and fungi. It's that there needs to be. these plants and fungi and animals for life as we understand it to continue to function, Mark: right, exactly. And that requires, because everything is so fragmented now, it requires some level of active management in order to protect from invasions by invasive species, for example, which will wipe out all the biodiversity. Yucca: right? Or in my area of the world where we're missing keystone species, so we're missing whole ecological roles, there used to be these animals that aren't there anymore, and if you just take your hands off and you don't touch it, you fence that area off, that area will starve, quite literally, right? If you don't, if humans don't try, because it's kind of like the voting. No management is management. Mark: yes. Yucca: Right? It is a choice that we're making as well. And so we have to really be thoughtful about and understand the systems that we're dealing with. Mark: right. And there is so much science. I'm not saying we know everything, because we don't. There's an awful lot that we don't know, but there is a tremendous body of science about how to manage lands in order to improve biodiversity at this point. Yucca: And we're getting better at it. Mark: One of the things that we who work in the conservation sector, in the environmental sector, actually need to fight against within our own ranks is the group of people who still advocate for putting a fence around things and leaving it alone. Yucca: That's why I asked you a little bit about how you are using the term, because where I am, the term has been kind of changing a little bit, where we have kind of two different camps, which are the restorationists and the conservationists. And the conservationists are the people who, who are, you know, an anti gras, who are like, don't touch anything. Don't just fence it off. Don't know people know nothing. And then you've got the people who are going, well, let's look at the way the whole system works and maybe we do need to, you know, one, let's not keep kick the people off. 'cause you know, It's been here for 20, 000 years. But also, like, what, you know, what about the animals? What do we do for the, you know? So that's why I was kind of asking a little bit about that terminology there. Mark: here's a great example in California. There were devastating wildfires. that ran through Sequoia National Park. And in Sequoia National Park are the giant sequoia trees, these, you know, huge, vast, amazing, amazing Yucca: Amazing. Mark: awe inspiring. Well, because humans had been suppressing fire in those forests for a hundred years, when that wildfire ripped through, it burned much, much hotter than it ever would have otherwise, and killed a lot of those trees. Now, there's a big debate. The Park Service wants to replant seedlings of giant sequoias. in the burned area. And there are environmental organizations, self styled, that are saying, no, you can't do that. You just have to let nature take its course because that's the right thing. But we have been suppressing fire for a hundred years. We have been doing the most invasive, destructive thing that can be done to that ecosystem for a hundred years, and now you say we're supposed to leave it alone? That's ridiculous. You know, reseeding giant sequoias in that area is absolutely the right thing to do in order to keep the species from going extinct. And, I, I don't know, I mean, obviously this is what I believe. Yucca: I'm smiling as you're saying that because I used to work in stand management in the Jemez, and we had very, very similar, like, I can hear the two sides right now and it's, People get, have very, it's very emotional, right, and one of the things that happens, I think, is that people have very strong emotional connections without having some of the background to understand what is happening. And that goes back to what we were talking about before with some of our responsibility, I think, is that we have a responsibility to become informed about these Issues and learn about them and and be able to, if you're going to be involved in making choices about how these If this land is going to be managed, you need to understand the ecosystems that you're dealing with. Because our system, our ponderosa pine systems are very similar in terms of the fire ecology. You know, people become very, people are very concerned about thinning and controlled burns and things like that, and I think that they're coming from a good place. Their hearts in a good place in it, but are very, very misinformed about what the results of their actions will be if we do that. Mark: And there are two big pieces there that I think really are takeaways from all of this. The first one is that they are coming from a good place, but it's a romantic place. And we need to recognize in ourselves when we are romanticizing something rather than basing our decisions on facts. Yucca: Mm Mark: The second is... We have seen a terrible onslaught on the appreciation for expertise over the course of the last 40 years or so. And we need to respect the people who have letters after their names and understand deeply how things work. We need to listen to them. And they don't all agree with one another, that's fine. But in generally, in most cases, there is a scientific consensus. To some degree about what is the right course for these sorts of decisions. And we need to be listening to people that have devoted their lives to understanding these questions, rather than just thinking that because we like trees or we like nature, that we are in a position to make those kinds of decisions. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mark: I'm speaking to you and you're in the process of getting letters after your name. Yucca: I have plenty of letters. I'm getting some more letters, but yes. Yeah. . Well, I had cut you off when you, in your story, to ask you to explain a little bit about the monuments, of why that was such an important issue for you to go across the entire continent. to talk about. Mark: That was a really important question. And as you mentioned this, yeah, it's true. I mean, there are a few reasons that I would put myself into an airplane at this point because of the impact on the atmosphere, but this is one that feels like on balance.  Yucca: Potentially for your lungs, too. Mark: yes, yes, that's true boy, although I came back here and oh my god, the smoke, we're, we're really, we're really buried in, in wildfire smoke right now. So, Going to, and, and, you don't have to go to D. C. in order to advocate for things you care about. First of all, a lot of decisions are local, and you can go and talk with local officials, or organize a contingent to go and talk with local officials. But also, your congressional representative has an office in your area. You can go and talk with them and let them know what you feel about things. Yucca: Well, and state level as well, Mark: state level, absolutely. Yucca: right? And it, you know, it's going to depend a lot on your state. The experience in a smaller, population smaller state it may be A lot easier, like in my state in New Mexico, going down to the roundhouses is super easy you just walk in and there's everybody and you just go up and talk to them. I would imagine in a more populated state, it's a little bit trickier, but it's still possible, right? Mark: The culture contrast between, you know, California, of course, is the most populous state, almost 40 million people and the culture in Sac, yes, between Sacramento, our state capital, and D. C. is really stark. When you go to lobby in Sacramento, If you're a Democrat, you almost never wear a tie. I mean, registered lobbyists will probably wear a tie. But if you just go as a constituent or as an advocate for, you know, one of our groovy left enviro positions, You can wear an open shirt and a sport coat, a pair of slacks, I mean, and, you know, you don't have to hide your tattoos and your piercings and all that kind of stuff, it's great. You go to Washington, it's a suit for a man. You wear a suit, you wear a tie. I left my earring in, but that was my one sort of concession. And and you're right, it's very organized and very regimented in Sacramento, just because of the sheer volume of people that are, that are traipsing through there. Yucca: hmm. Mark: But I, I really, I want to come back to this idea that elected officials are there in a democracy to represent you, and they may not know what you think, Yucca: hmm. Mark: so go tell them. You know, get informed on an issue and, you know, go tell them what you think, what you, what you would like them to do. It's more powerful when you've organized more people to be a part of that voice. And that's why the Conservation Alliance exists. And that's Yucca: many other organizations too, Mark: yes, yes. That's why that's why community organizers exist. To gather the voices of... Individuals into a collective voice that's able to make change happen and that's true in any representative democracy, so it's, it's well worth, you know, you know, sticking a hand in, and the people you're talking to are just people. They don't bite. At worst, they will frown. That's, that's Yucca: wrinkle their brow at you. Mark: Yeah, that's, that's about the worst of it. I didn't have any Republican visits this time, so, we were very welcomed and just very encouraged, and I think there are going to be some declarations coming up here in the next few months that will make us very happy. So it's bringing all this back around politics is How we as a collective society make decisions about what's important, what's not, and what's going to happen. And if you care about your world, and as atheopagans and naturalistic pagans, I believe our listeners do care about their world and about their fellow humans then it's incumbent on us to say so, and do things that make things better. Yucca: I keep having the image of Mary and Pippin sitting on Treebeard's shoulder and shouting, but you're part of this world too! Mark: Yeah, yeah, there's, because there are things in this world that are worth fighting for. Right? Yucca: Yep. Well, we could certainly go on for a long time, but I think this is a little bit of a longer episode, so we should probably finish up here. And we are going into October, and we have some fun, and some spooky, and some great episodes coming up. And Stinky, and all of those great things that we love to celebrate, and recognize, and all of those things, and this great Time of year. And happy autumn, everybody. Mark: Happy autumn! Yeah, Yucca: So, thanks, Mark. Mark: yeah, thank you so much, Yucca. It's a pleasure talking with you, and I'm still obviously really kind of jazzed about this trip, so thanks for welcoming a conversation about that into the podcast. Yucca: See y'all next week. Mark: All right, take care.

How do we normalize “sustainable seafood” so that it becomes the DEFAULT way of sourcing and buying? Why should we bring diverse (and even opposing) viewpoints TOGETHER to solve the global challenges facing our oceans? And what makes us fall in love with seafood in the first place—what are the moments that make working in this industry SO exciting and fulfilling?  We dive into ALL of that, covering everything from crab boils to eating fish with “Cheeto raspberry yogurt sauce” on the newest episode of The Conch podcast, which features not one, but FOUR innovators from various organizations reimagining the future of fish and seafood!  Episode Transcript  Episode Guide: :00 Intro 00:54 Meet Laura Miller of the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions (CASS), Christina Callegari of the Ecology Action Centre, Corbett Nash of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program, and Jenny Barker of FishWise 10:11 Our guests share their favorite seafood memory 19:05 What should the sustainable seafood community and seafood industry pay more attention to? Our guests share what they think Resources:  Click the links to learn more about the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions, Ecology Action Centre, FishWise, and Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch. Recommend this episode to one person who is curious about ensuring the survival and wellbeing of the seafood sector for years to come.  

Sobrepesca, poluição, contaminação por microplásticos, aquicultura, aquecimento global: o cenário atual dos pescados, de água doce e salgada, não é nada bom. Alguns dados:Já perdemos metade dos nossos recifes de corais e manguezais – alguns dos habitats mais produtivos da Terra. E levamos muitos estoques de peixes cruciais ao ponto de colapso, ameaçando os meios de subsistência e a segurança alimentar das pessoas – e prejudicando outras espécies, incluindo aves marinhas, tartarugas e golfinhos. (fonte: WWF)O consumo global de alimentos aquáticos aumentou a uma taxa média anual de 3,0%, desde 1961 – quase o dobro da taxa de crescimento anual da população mundial – e atingiu 20,2 kg per capita, mais que o dobro do consumo na década de 1960. (Fonte: Organização das Nações Unidas para Agricultura e Alimentação)O número de estoques sobrepescados em todo o mundo triplicou em meio século e hoje um terço das pescarias avaliadas no mundo estão sendo empurradas além de seus limites biológicos. (Fonte: Our World in Data)  Globalmente, jogamos cerca de 10% dos peixes e animais marinhos que capturamos de volta ao oceano (em sua maioria, mortos). Somado a isso, as perdas e desperdícios na cadeia chegam a 35% do volume pescado. (Fonte: A 20-year retrospective review of global aquaculture)Brasil está entre os 20 países no mundo que mais contribuem para a poluição plástica nos oceanos. Um estudo inédito, disponibilizado pelo projeto, aponta que cada brasileiro pode ser responsável por 16 quilogramas de resíduos no mar por ano. A ingestão de alimentos e água contaminados com microplásticos é a principal via de exposição humana. Os produtos da pesca são uma importante fonte de microplásticos na dieta humana.(Fonte: Rede Blue Keepers)Minha entrevistada é  Cintia Miyaji, bióloga, mestre e doutora em Oceanografia Biológica pela Universidade de São Paulo, idealizadora do primeiro Guia de Consumo Responsável de Pescado do Brasil e fundadora da Aliança Brasileira pela Pesca Sustentável. Também é fundadora da Paiche Consultoria e Treinamento e membro da Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions.Support the show

I began looking forward to this conversation as soon as it dropped on my calendar. Stephen Sullivan and Stio Inspire Connection with the Outdoors through their values and beautifully made outdoor products. We talk about the inspiration for Stio, his outdoor pursuits, and how their Pine Cone logo came to life. Facebook Twitter Instagram   The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!   Sign up for my Newsletter HERE.   I'd love to hear your feedback about the show!   You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com   or leave me a message on Speakpipe!   Presented to by:   Show Notes What was your first exposure to the outdoors? We packed our stuff up and moved to Colorado and I had been a big hockey and soccer player when I was a kid. There was no hockey in Grand Junction, which I never let my mom live down. Now both my boys are hockey players and I ended up coaching them later in life, but I got into skiing and so, you know, I think skiing was probably my first real kind of entry into the outdoor community and the outdoor world. How about your beginnings in the outdoor business or the outdoor industry side of things? That's actually a little tied to my Uncle Joe as well. So his girlfriend at the time, whose name was Betsy Clark. She opened what has gotta be one of the first true outdoor specialty stores in the country. I mean, there might have been 50 or a hundred of 'em at the time, but she opened a store called Lewis and Clark in Grand Junction. When I was 12, I got a job in the back room. I've always been a pretty handy kid and kind of knew how to put stuff together. And so I got a job actually mounting cross-country skis for her, which led to me going out on the sales floor. What was the inspiration for Cloudveil? The real inspiration behind that was I had a friend who is still a guide, was an I F M G A guide who had gone over to live in Chamonix for a winter in the early nineties. And he came back and brought me a pair of pants that were made of a Schoeller material, what's now known as soft-shell. I just became obsessed with them and, you know, ended up backcountry skiing in them and just thought that the textile wasn't being utilized in the current market. So the idea that kind of got Cloudveil started was to build a soft-shell jacket. Somehow I found the guys at Schoeller and Tom Wine Bender, who was the president of  Schoeller North America for a long time, who is still, a dear friend. He sent me five yards of fabric and I made a jacket with a local seamstress. I got another buddy in here in Jackson, a guy named Brian Cousins, inspired by the concept as well, and we just decided to give it a go. And now Stio, what inspired Stio? Well, two things. Cloudveil didn't end particularly well. We had been bought and sold a couple of times and we were owned by Spyder, the ski wear brand at the time. They eventually approached me with the opportunity to try to buy the brand back and I had a really strong financial partner and we tried to do that. We spent about seven months trying to come to terms on a deal and, literally basically got left, at the altar on a deal. I had to non-compete for about a year and a half. So I had some time to really stew on what had gone well with Cloudveil and what hadn't gone well, and what I wanted to do differently. And there were two things that really stuck out to me, the. The first thing was Cloudveil was a very top-of-the-mountain brand. It was all about really technical outerwear was kind of the forte. And I really wanted to build a brand that covered kind of more of the totality of the mountain life. Not just top-of-the-mountain stuff, but everything you could wear. As we term it here, all the way down to the boardwalk. Because you spend a lot of time in the outdoor sportswear you wear on a daily basis and, probably a little less time in the backcountry. So it just felt to me like trying to find that balance that really just showed off the totality of the mountain lifestyle. That was important. T Then the second thing that was a real catalyst for me was as Cloudveil grew, we found that the retailers started just segmenting us. Like they did anybody else, and they would say, okay, well here's the allocation of dollars we have for your hard shell, your soft shell, your fleece, your base layer, whatever it might be. And we were developing some pretty cool creative products at Cloudveil. We had, we had some pretty talented designers and, cutting edge at the time too. And the retailers weren't really buying it. They were buying the more standard-issue stuff. But we opened a retail store in the last couple of years we had Cloudveil and we had a very small direct business. And those channels were buying the more creative product. So I really felt like there was this opportunity to be more creative, to maybe bring a little more of a dose of fashion. A fashion element into the line and, and to still make, you know, beautiful technical outerwear, but also make a beautiful sportswear collection. Then the other thing that really was resonating with me was that I felt like there was a hole in the market that, nobody was purely focusing on the direct consumer channel. And although we're fairly omnichannel now, at the time when we launched the business, we basically put a catalog in the mail, turned our website on, and we opened a retail store all in the same month. And we focused specifically on that direct consumer channel to start. And it's worked out pretty well. I love the story behind your logo. Share a little bit about that with us. Our logo is, is a, is a Whitebark Pine Cone. It's a modern abstraction of a Whitebark Pine Cone. And we were going through, an initial study and we brought in some folks to help us kind of build the ecosystem in its infancy and around our value set and the value set that we wanted the brand to espouse. We went through a lot of different logo concepts and a woman that had worked for us at the time was the first one that said, you know, what about a pine cone? And I thought, oh, that's a cool idea. And then we got some graphic samples of that and I said, "you know, I think it really needs to be more of a modern abstraction of a pine cone because I want the brand to feel modern." But the whole concept was that we wanted something that really grounded us in kind of the place we are in, which is the Yellowstone Ecosystem. And we wanted something that reflected nature. And it turns out that the pine cone is a fascinating thing. Shortly after we launched the brand I went on a family trip to Italy and you can't believe where the Pine Cone shows up. It's on the staff of the Pope. It's got all these incredible meanings. So I think that was just serendipitous that we came up with that logo. But we really wanted it to reflect back on the plight of the White Bark Pine and the Yellowstone ecosystem and around the Intermountain West. I love how you have the daily reminder idea. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how we might expand that daily reminder idea to help protect the places we love, maybe as individuals or as an industry. I think for us as brands and companies in this industry, it's really important to focus on doing the right thing. That's one of our core tenants is to do the right thing. And so, you know, we're trying to move towards a goal of a hundred percent sustainable textiles at some point. One of our core tenants is to do the right thing. So we're trying to move towards a goal of a hundred percent sustainable textiles at some point. We're in the high fifties right now on that and growing every year. We've been a climate-neutral company now for our third year in a row. We spend a lot of time as a company thinking about how we can get our employees outside. We have a flexible PTO policy. It's very similar to an unlimited policy where we encourage people to take a minimum of three weeks and if they are doing one of those lifetime trips, like the Grand Canyon or going on an expedition or doing some big travel, we would encourage them to do more. We published a stewardship report every year to acknowledge all those efforts. And we launched Stio Second Turn for reusing lightly worn products and reselling them and giving people a discount on new stuff. So I think for us, the obligation is to continue to show people how the outdoors can have such a terrific impact on your being, your psyche right? And your health, your wellness, and so we spend a lot of time doing that. What other outdoor activities do you participate in? You still ski a lot, sounds like. I do, I always have a goal to be on skis a hundred days. That sounds audacious to a lot of people, but for me, that is just a, you know, a quick lap on the King or quick hike up Glory on the pass. It's not like a full ski in the village for a whole day, but I ski a lot. I mountain bike and gravel ride a lot. I flyfish a ton. Those are my big core passions in life right now. Do you have any suggestions or advice for folks wanting to get into the outdoor business or grow their career if they're already doing something in the industry? I love this question. I've had this one very frequently and I'll be really honest with you. I think one of the best things people can do, people are always trying to, especially kids getting outta college, they've just gotten a degree, and they're trying to figure out what they want to do with their career. They're enchanted with the outdoor industry, but, but it's a big business now. And it's a real business and you need expertise. One of the things I think is the best thing somebody could do to get into the industry is to go work in outdoor retail. I truly believe that it was so foundational to me, and understanding what customers are looking for. Understanding merchandising how to represent a brand effectively to a customer, understanding the marketing, you see it all in an outdoor retail store. It's where the rubber meets the road and once you understand how all the stuff behind the scenes comes together when that customer's standing there asking you a question about a jacket or a pack, then you understand, you get a sense of how it all is important, each piece of that puzzle. I think it's great preparation. Do you have any favorite books or books you give as gifts or a favorite podcast? Podcasts? My favorite podcast going right now. There are two of 'em. I love the Rich Roll Podcast. I hope you've heard that. I think he does a really good job. And I've been really into Mill House lately, which is Andy Mill, who is a former ski racer. He used to be married to Chris Everett, and Andy's one of the preeminent tarpon fishermen in the world. He lives down in the Keys most of the year now. He's got a podcast that's been pretty fun to listen to. He's gotten a real wide diversity of not just, you know, fishing guides and fisherman, legendary fisherman. But he's also had people like Huey Lewis, who happens to be a really avid angler. So I've gotten a kick out of that recently. Do you have a couple of favorite books? One of my all-time favorite books was The River Why by David James Duncan. I also really loved the book, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. What's your favorite piece of outdoor gear? Under a hundred dollars. There's not a lot under a hundred bucks anymore, but I came up with kind of a fun one, I think. I would say ski crampons. Is there anything else you would like to say or ask of our listeners? The only thing I'd say to the listeners is just, you know, support brands and products that align with your values. I think it's really important that it's not just the companies, with all the people out there in the world, but supporting your local nonprofits, support causes that are important to you. Some of the things we do here that are just so rewarding are we're a big sponsor of the Doug Coombs Foundation, The Conservation Alliance and Camber Outdoors. I think those things are really important because they help perpetuate the outdoors for all of us. We will be offering listeners a code for 25% off their purchase. The code is for one-time use and excludes any third-party or sale items. Offer expires July 1, 2023. Code: OUTDOOR2023 Follow up with Sulli and Stio www.stio.com Instagram @stio @sullijackson

Today on episode 375 I'm talking with Conservation Alliance Executive Director Nicole Rom. Nicole came into the world with Conservation in her DNA. She is leading a tireless staff of conservationists working to harness the collective power of business and outdoor communities to fund and advocate for the protection of North America's wild places. Facebook Twitter Instagram The Outdoor Biz Podcast Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Sign up for my Newsletter HERE.  I'd love to hear your feedback about the show! You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com or leave me a message on Speakpipe! Presented to by: Show Notes First I want to start with how'd you end up attending Bates College? That's a great question to start off with, I was attracted to a small liberal arts college in Maine. You might not know that Bates has the second oldest outing club. They maintained several miles of the Appalachian Trail and they're a division one Ski team. I was a competitive downhill racer in high school and, was excited with the opportunity to continue that. Then most of all, I was able to be the first class that could study environmental studies as a major. So those were the reasons that drew me to Maine and to Bates in particular. So what was it like to be a Coxswain when on the crew team? I did that my freshman year for something new. I had never had the experience when I was in high school. I primarily skied and I'll just start by saying it's a perfect position for somebody who is short, loud, and enthusiastic, and I fit all of those criteria. You're essentially the captain of the boat that you're on. I was often a coxswain for the women's eight or the men's four and you're responsible for steering, setting the pace for the row. Counting for power motions, when you need to step up the pace when you're in a competition. And obviously one of my highlights was participating in the head of the Charles in Boston, one of the renowned rowing races. So that was a fun experience I did for a year. You're essentially the bow captain. People don't realize you're facing forward. You're the one that can see everything. The rowers are facing you and you're the one that sets the pace, the tone, and make sure that the boat is going straight and, emphasizing when there's time to do power strokes to move you forward in a competition. How were you introduced to the Outdoors? I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and grew up in Park City. So I learned to downhill ski at the age of three. My parents eventually moved to the East coast when I was in elementary school, but I essentially grew up in a family that really valued skiing and camping, and the outdoors. I particularly remember every Sunday was spent during my childhood hiking and doing something as a family outside. But mostly I would say my real connection to the outdoors is because I moved from Utah to Maryland to New York, and of course lived in Maine during college. My family consistently went back to Minnesota where my dad grew up in Ely, Minnesota or the gateway to the boundary waters canoe area wilderness. We'd go there twice a year in the winter and in the summer and it was the boundary waters that really laid the foundation. I had studied abroad my junior year in Tanzania and was really, moved by the experience studying wildlife ecology and conservation and learning Swahili. And I thought I'm going to apply to the Peace Corps. Unbeknownst to me, I thought I'd go back to East Africa since I had spent six months there and they ended up looking at my application and said, you've got really great experience in environmental education, we could use a volunteer like you in Kazakhstan. And so of course, first I had to pull out a map and learn where Kazakhstan was, right? I had never heard of it. And then I, as I learned more, I thought, wow, what an amazing opportunity to live in a former Soviet Republic. I served from 2000, 2002, so it was the eighth group of Americans ever in that country. Wow. Literally eight years after the Soviet Union collapsed, they began sending volunteers every year. And while I was there, there was still a lot of the legacy of the Soviet Union in terms of weekly lines to get your flour and your basic food ingredients. So, while they were moving into a democratic nation, there was still a lot of that legacy. Russian was the dominant language, which I had the opportunity to learn. And I was there for two years teaching ecology to fifth through 11th grade. I, helped manage an after-school ecology club for the high school and executed a few fun summer camps. And what sticks out to this day was my connection with students and, Their passion and love for the mountains. Kazakhstan, just so our listeners understand, you've got the prairie step in the predominant part of the country, and then the Tien Shan Mountain range in the south that are the beginning of the Himalayas. The mountains rise up to 20,000 feet and I was lucky enough to be in the southeastern part of the country in those mountains. So I bought cross-country skis and I took from my kids hiking in the local mountain and we volunteered at the local nature preserve at their naturalist program and interpretive center, it was an incredible experience. Was there a trip or activity or person that inspired the conservation in you? Two things come to mind. The first, was when I did an Outward Bound course in Colorado when I was 15, turning 16. It was the first time I did an experience like that with peers and with my parents. And I quickly realized that the outdoors and adventure is a lot more fun when you're with folks your own age than being dragged along. That was sort of a period in time, I think anyone who's a teenager can remember what it's like. During my high school years, there was a period of time where I would take my, then Walkman, now iPod to listen to music, was dragged along hikes that I didn't want to do. And when I had that experience, I realized I really took it on as something that I loved for my own. And I got into climbing after that. So that was the moment that it became something that I loved and not just something spoon-fed to me by my parents. And the other, person that really sticks out beyond my grandparents was when I was at Bates. I had the amazing opportunity to meet Terry Tempest Williams. Somebody I deeply admire and love and obviously read her books and being born in Utah, understanding Red Rock country and the Great Salt Lake. Meeting her was really, life-changing. We had the opportunity to take a sunrise hike with her while she was visiting and doing a talk. And I remember specifically the talk that she gave at the school, which connected all of the courses that I was taking at the time, and helped me really realize that I could choose environmental studies as a major and as a career path. And it wasn't just something I could enjoy reading or doing on the side, that it actually could go from passion and interest to career. And your work and your experience seemed focused on climate, how did that develop over the years versus other, some other environmental subject? Yeah, so after the Peace Corps, I returned back to the US and pursued graduate school in environmental policy and landed my first job at the National Wildlife Federation, so a large conservation award. I was, really managing their conservation education programming in the Midwest and the Upper Great Lakes. And it was at that time, 2004, 2005 before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out that NWF and a lot of the large conservation and green environmental orgs were starting to realize they needed to, prioritize climate change as an issue and some were wrapping their arms around it quicker than others. And at that point, I had this amazing opportunity. My Aunt Becky, who was heavily involved in the boundary waters, had worked closely with a man named Will Steger. The National Geographic Arctic Explorer, who they had worked collaboratively with on protecting the Arctic Refuge in the nineties. Will was often brought to Congress to testify on issues of the Arctic. He was starting a new nonprofit focused on Climate Change. She called me and said, Nicole, I think you'd be perfect. Will Steger is starting this org focused on climate change, education, and policy, and, you should explore it. So I came to Minnesota in May of 2006 for an interview. I had never met Will Steger before. I remember my interview was on his houseboat on the Mississippi River with ducks floating by, and I thought, this is the weirdest interview I've ever done. And he had small grants for $35,000 and this grand vision to really address climate change and no real plan for how to do it. I was 27, going on 28 and I thought, what an amazing opportunity to be the executive director of a new organization. So I moved to Minnesota from Michigan where I was living at the time, excited to be closer to my grandparents in the boundary waters and literally thought I would be working with Will for one or two years. I'd learn a lot and I'd move on, and I ended up staying in that role for 15 and a half years until I recently left last year and joined the Conservation Alliance. And so the Conservation Alliance recently announced an inaugural summit this May to advance business-led conservation in partnership with the Next 100 Coalition, Outdoor Alliance, and the Outdoor Industry Association. Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah. We're super excited to make this dream a reality in 2023. So all Conservation Alliance members can send one staff member for free. It's going to be held, as you said, in late, may in Colorado. And our goal with the summit is to really celebrate the conservation successes we've had to educate and empower and unite our member businesses and their employees, both old and new, around a shared equitable land and water conservation agenda. And so themes will include climate. , biodiversity, equity, access, recreation, and of course rural economic development. And for us, the summit's not just a conference and a chance to come together after several years living in the pandemic and, missing that opportunity. It's about engagement and [00:20:00] educating our members, but most importantly, providing a platform for our business leaders to be more effective advocates for conservation. So how can brands participate? Well, the first thing I'll say is that any business that cares about conservation can join the Conservation Alliance regardless of industry or size. Obviously, the outdoor industry is core to the organization, to our founding, and to who we are and who will continue to be. But the organization's continuing to see that we need to increase our impact for conservation. We have to diversify and grow our member business. and that there's power in our collective collaboration and that, collective multiplier. And really we want those who value, the protection of wild places and outdoors to join us. So if a company is doing even less than a million in annual revenue, it costs as little as $500 to join the Conservation Alliance. And it's a way for, member companies to align their brand with an organization that's both funding and advocating for wild places and outdoor places. It's just a super exciting time to see the impact the Conservation Alliance has had over the last 30 years, but more specifically the last 15 years where we've invested over, a million dollars into some of these key priority campaigns, and now we're seeing the success of that effort come to fruition in 23. let's talk about what else is new for the Conservation Alliance in 2023. What else have you guys got going on? One of the exciting things that have been shifting is how we, deploy our grant-making dollars. from investing in a few priority campaigns. As I mentioned, some of those we're just seeing successes on the Boundary Waters and Bristol Bay and the Tongass, and Bear's Ears. Seeing the National Monument reinstated under the Biden administration. All of these were long-standing commitments of the Conservation Alliance, but some of the new things that we are deeply passionate about are equity and access. Two years ago, we launched our Confluence grant-making program to invest. Historically racially excluded groups to really fund organizations with budgets under 500,000 led by black, indigenous, and communities of color, to bring, more diversity and representation into the conservation movement. so that's an exciting new addition for us. And of course, the summit is a new effort for us to really bring our member community together under one umbrella to unite around, a shared agenda. As listeners listening to all this, I think it's inspiring to me, what are some things, two or three things that we can do maybe personally or directly in our home hometowns to help mitigate the climate issues? I often think of actions in three ways. Your choices, your voice, and your vote. How you spend your dollars, the companies that are aligned with your values, and choosing to invest with every dollar you spend, how you spend that money matters and sends a signal. What's next on your adventure list? So right before the pandemic, I finished visiting all 50 states, which is a goal of mine. That was really fun. Now I'm always eyeing both domestic and international adventures. I'm keen to visit all the national parks and several monuments for sure, but what's next on my list this year is trekking in the Dolomites in Italy. I'm a big fan of the Hut To Hut system in Europe. And then, I'm also exploring backpacking in the Wind River range in Wyoming, for a more local adventure. Do you have any daily adventures or daily routines to keep your sanity? Oh, I do have a daily yoga practice. Sometimes it's as short as, 15 minutes but it's at least 30. That keeps me sane because my mind is always going a mile a minute, and that just grounds me. Because I live in Minnesota, I am doing a lot of shoveling. What are one or two books that you've read that inspire the conservationists in you and might help us? I'm going to pick some oldies, but goodies. Desert Solitaire by Ed Abbey. It was definitely a game changer for me reading that in the nineties. Anything by Terry Tempest Williams, of course, I love, but I started with Refuge, uh, her book about, breast cancer and generations of women and the Great Salt Lake. She's just a beautiful writer about natural history and, conservation. And then, Bill McKibben, the End of Nature. He published in 1980 about climate change, and he's written several books since then. But, The End of Nature is a great book if you haven't read it already. Do you have a favorite piece of outdoor gear that's under a hundred dollars? I just got back from Costa Rica and the one thing that I took with me that I was so thankful for, and I always have with me, is my, it's super light collapsible REI  backpack that compresses down not much bigger than your fist. I just love that I can throw that in and use it whenever I'm traveling, especially if I'm not taking a larger backpack. Do you have any suggestions or advice for folks wanting to get into the outdoor adventure biz or conservation biz? I always say start with your own network. Whether it's through college or school or friends, or family. You'll never know where your network can take you. Base Camp Outdoors is a fabulous job board for those who are looking to get into the outdoor industry and conservation. And then the Futurist Project is a really remarkable outdoor leadership program for those looking for mentorship, post-college. But my biggest piece of advice that I would want to leave listeners with is "remember to follow your passions and interests. There's a way to have them lead you into a career that you love." As we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to say to our listeners or ask of our listeners? Yeah, I think if you work at a company, check out the Conservation Alliance and become a member. And if you're already an employee at a member company, just want to see you get more engaged with our lobby trips and nominating and voting on our grantees. You can definitely learn more at the Conservation Alliance, website, but, mostly for everyone else listening, I think while individual actions matter, and I always want to encourage people to do things like I mentioned before about your voice, your choice, your vote, remember that collective action is far more powerful. Where can people find you if they'd like to follow up? They can find me on Instagram at @nroutdoors, or nicole@conservationalliance.com and of course, LinkedIn when you think about networking, that's a great place and I'm happy to connect with folks on LinkedIn.

Hey Nature Nerds! In this week's full episode, Megan talks about the Nahanni National Park, one of the 7th wonders of Canada, but also a keeper of a dark and mysterious past... enjoy! Organization to Support: https://www.conservationalliance.com/ Mission We harness the power of businesses and outdoor communities to protect North America's cherished wild places and outdoor spaces. Through the collective strength of our membership – companies from banks to breweries and outdoor gear – we champion solutions that balance the best interests of the land and water, wildlife, and people. Since 1989, we've helped protect 73 million acres and 3,580 river miles, remove or halt 37 dams, purchase 21 climbing areas & designate five marine reserves. https://www.conservationalliance.com/success/nahanni-wilderness/ They are based out of Bend, OR BUT they have a Nahanni Valley specific page- and they do work there. They have a 92% on charity navigator, so yay! The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society used Conservation Alliance support in its successful campaign to expand the Nahanni National Park Preserve by a stunning seven million acres. The park now protects the entire watershed of the South Nahanni River, a popular outdoor recreation destination. References: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcYZ9rH_S9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr1v5N6ovp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd6dWKwVZ2M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahanni_National_Park_Reserve http://secretsofnahanni.com/ https://www.outdoorjournal.com/news/secrets-nahanni-valley-headless-men/ https://denenation.com/ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/nahanni-valley-0016177 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/mysterious-deaths-rcmp-reopen-case-2005-1.4649717 https://archive.org/details/tropicalvalleysi00cana/page/n5/mode/2up https://www.goldseiten.de/artikel/547856--NorZinc-Signs-Environmental-Agreement-with-Key-First-Nation-Partners-in-Yellowknife.html https://cabinradio.ca/96716/news/environment/norzinc-awaits-licence-approval-for-prairie-creek-mine/ https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/david-horesay-frederick-hardisty https://www.abenakiextreme.com/why-the-nahanni-valley-is-creepier-than-any-horror-film/ https://darkpoutine.com/2021/08/181-the-headless-men-of-the-nahanni-valley/ https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/2018/2/21/mysteries-of-the-nahinni-park-reserve-in-canada https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/nt/nahanni https://zeph456.medium.com/the-valley-of-headless-men-e249a493efed https://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/canada/experiences/news/the-haunting-history-of-this-canadian-national-park https://web.archive.org/web/20040515204806/http://www.artcanadacarvings.com/people_of_the_deh_cho.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090308130249/http://www.tsuutina.ca/page.aspx?pageID=6-8 https://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/results.html https://mysteriesofcanada.com/nwt/legends-of-the-nahanni-valley/ https://www.jmplumbley.com/2021/09/22/the-big-bad-wood-nahanni-valley/ https://albertaonrecord.ca/melvin-and-ethel-ross-fonds https://www.banffcentre.ca/events/nahanni-river-forgiveness

Welcome to episode 364 of The Outdoor Biz Podcast, brought to you this week by The Running Event. Today I'm joined by Christina Henderson, Event Director for The Running Event. The premier conference and trade show for run specialty retailers. Christina and I talk about the recent TRE show in Austin and the debut of their new Switchback space featuring Outdoor brands. Facebook Twitter Instagram The Outdoor Biz Podcast Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Sign up for my Newsletter HERE.  I'd love to hear your feedback about the show! You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com or leave me a message on Speakpipe! Show Notes So let's talk about 2022 overall. Obviously, it was good. Does the whole team feel that way? Everyone truly walked away feeling very good. So, very positive energy and accomplishment. And of course, there are always things that we can work on and do better, but you know, the team walked away. feeling very proud of what we did and as they should. What were your top three wins from the Switchback space? Switchback at the running event was space on the trade show floor, but it was also networking opportunities. We did a breakfast with the Conservation Alliance and we did a trail cleanup. It truly was an experience and, we walked away feeling very happy with what we accomplished in year one. What was the feedback from the brands? Our number one objective is can we create a space for business to happen. And, that is what happened in the Switchback space and the TRE space. We have received, very positive feedback from brands in the switchback space and. Saying again, "Hey, we're behind you. This concept is going to work and we will support you moving forward. We found value this year and we believe that there will be even more next year." Was there anything you were a little worried about that, but came off as fantastic? The first that comes to mind is our education program. We have heard more feedback on our education program than any other year, and it wasn't by accident. I will say the team this year, we were so deliberate and intentional with every piece, and education was a big focus of ours. So as your first time as the head honcho, how'd that feel? It felt great. It really did. You know being on-site, it's my favorite week of the year. There's no question. Just seeing all the smiling faces, all of the energy, people are learning, and truly, my team thrive. Follow up with Christina Website: https://www.therunningevent.com chenderson@divdcom.com IG: @cjflenderson

The post Oct 11, 2022: Selkirk Conservation Alliance appeared first on KRFY Radio.

From a young age, Shoren Brown's life has been shaped by his experiences in nature, from fishing in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana where he grew up, to backpacking through Montana where he lives now. Today, as the Executive Director for Conservation Alliance, he is working to protect these spaces which are so fundamental to our existence on earth. Conservation Alliance is an organization that partners with locally focused grassroots organizations to enhance biodiversity, reduce carbon emissions, and conserve land and water resources. In today's episode, Shoren shares what makes him hopeful about the future, advice for anyone interested in getting involved in the conservation space, and explains why, in order to adequately address environmental issues, we need to be taking our concerns directly to congress.    Key Points From This Episode:An overview of Shoren's background in the conservation space, and the work that he is now doing with Conservation Alliance.Pride that Shoren feels towards the team that he is currently leading at Conservation Alliance.What inspires Shoren most about the brands that he and his team work with.Characteristics of grantees that Conservation Alliance likes to work with.The focus of Conservation Alliance's Confluence Program.Why Conservation Alliance is part of the movement against moving the Outdoor Retailer event back to Utah.Shoren shares the approach that he believes to be most effective when dealing with environmental issues.What a lot of Shoren's day-to-day work consists of.How Conservation Alliances chooses which projects to focus on.Why it is so valuable for brands to engage with elected officials about the issues they care about.Two people in the conservation space who Shoren admires.Shoren shares some examples of the wild experiences which have shaped his life.Advice from Shoren for anyone interested in entering the conservation space.A “final four” round with Shoren where he shares his favorite book, his most vivid desert memory, and a profound call to action.Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Conservation Alliance Shoren Brown on LinkedInEmerald ExpositionsOutdoor RetailersBears-Ears Inter-Tribal CoalitionDesert Solitaire by Edward AbbeyEREMEREM on Instagram

On this 60th episode of the SHINE podcast, I am delighted to share this amazing interview with a new friend, James Regulinkski of Carbon Collective. Together we talk about the important subject of sustainable finance and investing. In this interview, you will learn how we can 10x our return on investment for climate and the impact of investing in ESGs versus non ESGs and how that supports a world that works for everyone. We also talk about Project Drawdown and how that was a huge inspiration for the mission and vision of Carbon Collective and how they choose their investment portfolios. Lastly, we speak about the special co-founder relationship of James and Zach and the practices James engages in as an early stage entrepreneur to keep his light shining bright.   Guest Links:   Fossil Free Solutions — www.fossilfreesolutions.org Carbon Collective — https://www.carboncollective.co/ How Banks Could Bail Us Out of the Climate Collective — https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/how-banks-could-bail-us-out-of-the-climate-crisis?mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social Aspiration Bank — https://www.aspiration.com/ Beyond Science Based Targets — https://wwfint.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/beyond_science_based_targets___a_blueprint_for_corporate_action_on_climate_and_nature.pdf Symbrosia — https://symbrosia.co/offsets   SHINE Links:   Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust, innovative, and inclusive culture at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes   Building Trust Free Gift — https://www.leadfromlight.com   Carley Links   Book Carley for Speaking — https://carleyhauck.com/speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development — https://carleyhauck.com/learning-and-development Carley's Book — https://carleyhauck.com/SHINEbook Executive Coaching with Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/executive-coaching Contact Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/contact Carley's Patreon Page https://www.patreon.com/carleyhauck   Well Being Resources:   Inner Game Meditations — https://carleyhauck.com/meditations Doterra — https://www.doterra.com/US/en/site/carleyhauck 4 Sigmatic — 15% Discount code Shine — https://us.foursigmatic.com/?rfsn=4405553.d15cc7&discount=SHINE   Social:   LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/carley-hauck/ IG — https://www.instagram.com/carley.hauck/ Website — https://www.carleyhauck.com Newsletter — https://www.leadfromlight.com Shine Podcast Page — https://carleyhauck.com/podcast     The Imperfect Shownotes   0:01 Carley Hauck Hi, welcome to the SHINE podcast. My name is Carley Hauck, I am your host. This podcast focuses on the intersection of science, the application of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams, and awareness practices so that you can cultivate the conscious inner game skills to be the kind of leader our world needs now.   Please go over and hit the subscription button so that you don't miss any future episodes and so that you have access to all the wonderful episodes of the past three years. Additionally, go to leadfromlight.com This is my free newsletter that also gives you bi weekly inspiration and alerts you to new podcast episodes.   This is the 60th episode. And it will be the last episode for the next couple of months as I regroup and take a well deserved pause. The SHINE podcast has been shining bright since May 2019. And I am delighted to share this amazing interview with a new friend, James Regulinkski of Carbon Collective and we talk about the important subject of sustainable finance and investing. In this interview, you will learn how we can 10x our return on investment for climate and the impact of investing in ESGs versus non ESGs and how that supports a world that works for everyone. We'll also talk about Project Drawdown and how that was a huge inspiration for the mission and vision of Carbon Collective and how they choose their investment portfolios. We'll also speak to the special co-founder relationship of James and Zach and what James does as an early stage entrepreneur to keep his light shining bright.   The future is up to us humans. I can't wait for you to listen. Thanks so much for being here.   Carley Hauck 2:28   Hello, SHINE podcasters thank you so much for joining me and my friend James Regulinkski. He is the co-founder of Carbon Collective. And James, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Thanks for joining me.   James Regulinkski 2:44   Oh, Carley, thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure.   Carley Hauck 2:46   Well, one of the first questions that I often ask folks, because SHINE is about conscious, inclusive leadership is: what does conscious, inclusive leadership and business mean to you?   James Regulinkski 3:05   I love this question. I love to challenge my thoughts on this a lot. And I think my opinion might be a little bit out there. But I guess that will be for all of you to decide. So I think the number one thing that a leader needs to do, which is particularly hard in the US, is to realize that their job is not to lead, their job is to support every other person at the company and the organization. I think with the sort of the culture of the individual, we get hyper focused on what are the superpowers and strengths and talents of leaders? How cool are they? What is Elon Musk gonna say next, what kind of personality do they have?   And I think most things happen in the world, because you have an incredible team there. And so, well, my job, my probably my most important job as the founder has been too, to bring the right team together to make these things happen. It's closely followed by making sure that that team has all the resources they need to to thrive, that they don't aren't blocked by things that don't need a block be blocked by that. We haven't created systems that impede them from being the best selves, that we haven't detracted from their life in a way where they can't bring their best selves to work, and that we're using their skills on the right problems. So vision setting can help sort of establish the direction and the momentum of the company and, and the holding, holding different parts of the processes that need to happen so that that people's time is being used effectively and that we're all going in the same direction well, can look a little bit like what we often call that sort of leadership set setting. They're like, Oh, I'm this is the map to where we're going. For us Carbon Collective we talk a lot about the inverted pyramid that as co-founder, as one of the co founders My job is to support and let everyone else stand on my shoulders.   Carley Hauck 5:05   Some of the salient things I heard you say, and thank you for that answer, was really creating the atmosphere for your team to thrive, so that they can bring their best selves. And the truth is that we bring our messy selves to right. You know, it's like, it's like, it's not one without the other sometimes. Right?   James Regulinkski 5:26   And part of that, exactly, I think it's sometimes similar to parenting, which is like, co-founders can have conflicts, and we fight, but we don't. We don't. Sometimes parents don't resolve their fights in front of their kids. And so kids never see that there is a resolution process. And similarly, Zach and I tried to resolve any problems that we have ever had in the space of the company. So we show how resolution of conflict occurs and what aspiration we have around that. That's a way in which we sort of live that and show our messy selves. I don't pretend I go through my ups and downs cycle, I don't pretend I don't have them. We are initially talking about like, Oh, should I just not come to a morning meeting? If I'm, if I'm having a down day? And the answer is no, absolutely show up. But also let everyone know that this is where you are and what you can and can't do. And that reminds people that having limits stating your limits, communicating those is part of, of giving everyone permission to do that.   And if if you're in a place of that's traditionally viewed as a place of power, the example you set probably has more weight than what you say, if I if I tell everyone I'm about to go take a run to deal with anxiety, it's going to be a lot received much more differently, in terms of giving other people's permission to say, oh, there, it's okay to deal with anxiety and not just hold it inside. Then if I say, you know, say nothing about it and have radio silence, or just sort of shutdown and don't respond to people well.   Carley Hauck 6:54   Yeah, I love that you're, you're really talking about leading from authenticity from vulnerability. And so that leads me to the next question, you have a very special relationship with your co founders, Zach Stein, and from what I've heard from listening to a couple interviews that you both have done separately, is that you've been childhood friends, I think since you were four, right? You grew up in the Bay area together, you had lots of, yeah, lots of interactions, and then you moved away, because your family went sailing around the South of France, I totally want to hear about that. And then you found each other again, after you came back, something like that?   James Regulinkski 7:35   Our dads were friends in college. And so as you know, we were sort of four to 10 ish. We were, you know, at each other's house all the time. And we have great stories of building forts, bailing out tree forts, from our sliding down mountains together, and just being completely silly as kids. And that was, like, you know, one of the one of those friendships that you, you, you hold on to, like, it's, it's formative, if you will.   But when we by the time, you know, I left to go sailing around the world with my family, and, and Zach actually came and visited us a couple of times. But, you know, by the time we were in high school, and then college, we were living in different parts of the US and going to school elsewhere. And there was not, you know, we have that we have that gap, you change, you grow.   But I did, when I moved back to the Bay Area, I took a job at ALL Power Labs, which was in Berkley, and I was biking home one day, and saw someone coming back for basketball. And he looked really familiar. And I don't remember who said it first, but we started staring at each other. And so we literally ran back into each other on the street, and started discovering who we were as adults and building a new friendship that wasn't based on necessarily just the childhood memories, but seeing where we had come and what we were up to. And then I got pulled into his entrepreneurial journey. And we started another company together. And the growing that we had, while maintaining that friendship made us both, I think, better at leading, better at being part of a company better at being mostly just better at being human and vulnerable. And then growing together and letting someone else sort of push you and and support you. Because I think both of those are necessary. So that was it is a it has been a joy to work with Zach and go through all of those all of the hard times and all of the exhilarating thrilling times.   Carley Hauck 9:40   Well, you know, I teach a lot with leaders and teams on creating a foundation of psychological safety. So that trust, innovation, belonging, high performance can really exist. And so what I imagine is there's a real strong level of psychological safety and trust between the two of you because of the longevity of your relationship.   And when I speak to psychological safety, it's, you know, maybe there's criticism, maybe, you know, maybe sometimes your real messy selves come through. But there's such a level, and this is my assumption. but there's a level of trust and like, you know what, Zach's kind of being an asshole today, but I really know he's got my back. Yeah, or vice versa, I really know that we will be able to resolve this conflict.   And so I feel curious, how do you resolve your conflict? You know, together? You were mentioning that before? And what do you think supports you to do that to come back and say, Hey, we've got the same mission, we're on the same team. Let's, let's let this kind of pass, let it go and get back to what we're here to do. Or I don't know, maybe that's not the narrative you have, maybe it's something different.   James Regulinkski 11:00   I mean, for us, we know that we are not going to be successful without each other in this company. And maybe it'll get to a point where one of us could leave in the distant future. And that would be fine. But like, right now, the company is what it is because we both brought our selves to this and what was so valued, like what we valued.   I want to take a step back a little bit to talk about how we sort of developed because after that, that hiatus in the friendship, like, you know, as adults, you are a different person than you are as a kid. And so we did intentionally rebuild that space of psychological safety. And it came in a fairly messy process, which I won't describe here because then you know, everyone will be psychoanalyzing me, but be no one wants to hear that, that the details of that drama, but one of the things we stumbled upon is a really great tool for us to, to grow, was we would read books together, we would both we listen to books, we both had a shared Audible account.   And there are books on on leadership on communication on psychological safety, whatever the topic was, because we found that one of us would go and read something and get excited about and try to explain it to the other, the other person would be like, Well, I don't see how that fits into my life I like and then starting, the person would have the first person who brought it would be like, I now need to defend this idea. And, and it would become a big issue. If we both read it at the like, one right after the other, and then came and talked about the ideas and how they might or might not fit into our work life or our relationship. That allowed us to sort of step back and be collaborative together on on that and see how it could fit in.   So we have our like our list of favorite books that that helped us. And one of them was Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, yeah, absolutely, which is a treat to listen to, because they'll actually sing some of those goofy songs, which most people tell you to skip over. But anyway, having that shared reading, and then making an aspirational goal of using that in our communication gave us all of these tools to fall back on.   Zach also has a lot of talents. But one one that he brought, or one idea that he brought into our relationship was name entertainment. So as we observed something that happened again, and again, we would just give it a name, so we could talk about it. And little tricks like that allowed us to sort of separate out the strong emotional anxiety, tension elements of any issue that came up, which sometimes was interpersonal, strictly.   And sometimes we were feeling strong emotions, because we're raising big chunks of money and hiring people and firing people and, and having to make decisions about the fate of the company. And not knowing whether it was right or wrong. So some of it was external, but you'd still have that strong emotional stance and being able to, to really see the other person. And to practice active listening, for example, again, coming out of the shared reading, and being able to know, what, see what the other person was doing in the practice of seeing the other person or of active listening has just allowed us to continue to help each other grow.   And like, I know that Zach has made me a better person, a better leader, a better participant in this company, and that is that there's really the foundation of a trust is that at the end of the day, I have seen how Zach has helped me become a better person. And so I can look back at that when I'm having a frustrating interaction or maybe I'm just hungry or maybe I'm fresh, like scared about something or worried about something at work and bringing that into conversation I would I ever need to take a step back and take a step back and can look back at this this now, you know, five years of working together. Six more than that now. Wow. And remembering like all the times that he has, he has been there that we have worked through the difficult thing we have used the skills we have learned to grow. And so that's really cool. And that's how we got there.   Carley Hauck 15:02   Thank you. Yeah, that's what I was hearing is that you, while leaders are learners, so you're already doing one of the right things, I also hear that you've been growing your self awareness and therefore able to self manage when those bigger emotions come up and even name, hey, this is happening right now. And what I hear is that you've had different tools to lean on, that have supported you to move through the conflict.   So I could go further into leadership, but why don't why don't you tell our listeners that you are the co-founder of the Carbon Collective, which is such a cool business. And it started in 2019, right before the pandemic, so you've had quite, you know, I don't even know what to call that quite a mountain. That's your first starting a new business in the midst of such a pivotal time.   James Regulinkski 15:54   Honestly, I think that starting right at the beginning of the pandemic was really for us, it was worked out really well. The whole world changed to remote work, and Zach and I wanted to be working remotely anyway. But it also meant that people were more available for these kinds of interviews. So the start of the business, we didn't know exactly what we were gonna do. It wasn't like we were chatting, like, oh, I have a perfect idea for business. Let's go start this.   We were like, we finished up our previous startup, we wrap that up, end of 2019. So really, it was right at the start of 2020. And we knew that we wanted to be working on climate change, we knew we wanted to be building something that was directly impactful to people's lives, and that we could actually manage with the skills and resources we had at the time.   So it wasn't like we needed to go learn how to be a chemical engineer to start a product or go find that person that was what is what is with the skills we have now how can we build this. And so really, it started out with just finding exercises, we sent out a survey to everyone we knew and we asked them to send it out to everyone they knew to understand how they related to their anxieties around climate change. We interviewed like 150 people or something both individuals and professionals in the space, trying to understand how they related to the money and their anxieties and climate change and, and their work and sort of this sort of broad space. And we started to come up with ideas that seemed like they might work. And it wasn't until that summer that we started to see how, as a planet, we have all the technologies that we need to solve climate change, but we weren't putting enough money collectively into solving them, we need to be investing about $5 trillion every year. And while that's a large number, it's not an insurmountable number. And well, there's a lot of new technologies that need to be implemented. It is not a novel idea, like go engineer a new thing that has never been seen before, we have all those tools. And so now we just need to direct that towards the solution.     And we discovered that people get exhausted by making constant decisions, making frequent decisions every day. And so having one time decisions helps allow you to be more likely to stick with a solution. And all of that came together into this idea, which is what Carbon Collective is, which is an online investment platform that allows individuals to divest their money from fossil fuels, invest in climate solutions, and put pressure on companies. And having that all sort of automatically taken care of for you means that you're not having that one more thing we're like. I'm gonna ignore the fact that my money is fueling the future I'm desperately trying to avoid in every other part of my life.   And I don't have to worry about, you know, constantly readjusting or putting pressure, etc, that someone else's, is taking care of that and then sharing that process with me, because I don't think it's enough to say, Oh, we got this where you don't have to think about it, because that's gonna lead to greenwashing that's going to lead to folks not being not understanding how their money or their their their life energy is being put to use.   And so we also sort of bring that all out into the open and you can go into our website and find out why we invest in everything we invest in, and how we come across that. As a disclaimer, this is not going to be financial advice. So this is just me talking about the history of our company and our story and our philosophy and so forth.   Carley Hauck 19:35   And I'll leave a link in the show notes so people can find Carbon Collective and learn about how they can, you know, get involved and open an account and all of those things. And since you just offered that lovely disclaimer, I will also share that I am a current client of Carbon Collective. And for those of you that are listening to the podcast, one of the things that I have made a commitment and intention for every single one of these episodes, and this is going to be, by the time this airs, it'll be number 60.   But I mentioned climate change and every single one of the episodes because that is the largest problem our humanity is facing. And it is why I started the writing of my book SHINE. And therefore why this podcast started, because I was doing a lot of research of leaders and companies that really wanted to reprioritize business so that it was in service of people and planet.   And it's really interesting, because I found out about Carbon Collective about a year ago, and I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, who also works in leadership and organizational development consulting. And I won't out him at the moment, but he had just started working at Accenture. And he was saying, you know, Carley, I've got this great 401(k). But it's invested in all these fossil fuels. And it's ridiculous, and this is totally not in alignment with my values. And now I have to do all this extra research. And then I happened to find out about your company. And I thought, Ah, this is awesome. This is awesome.   James Regulinkski 21:19   That's probably a good segue for me to also mention that we did just launch a 401k program for companies because most people do most of their investment, they're saving for retirement through a 401k plan if they have one. And they're often very few and very poor choices when it comes to investing with your values on a four with a 401k.   Carley Hauck 21:39   So let's talk about it. What is the 401k a Carbon Collective offer?   James Regulinkski 21:42     So right now we're offering essentially our same core portfolio theory. And as we watch other investment vehicles in the future, we'll sort of roll those into the plan as well. So the same idea where you divest, reinvest in climate solutions. So it's really a broadly diversified portfolio because most people want to have large market exposure for financial reasons so that they can sort of enjoy track the market and the growth in the market.   But they don't want to do that while investing in the things that are actively destroying the planet that they're going to retire into. I mean, how ironic is it that if you have, you know, enough money to retire, but it's in a world where you're where it is, it's a grim, grim version, not the one you imagined when you were doing all that saving?   So both divesting from those, and then taking that portion that would have gone to fossil fuels and saying, no, we want to, we want to invest that in the technologies that are actively bringing us to a solution that are transitioning our economy away from needing and relying on fossil fuels. So that is that portion for our in particularly in our robo advisors, or we call our climate solutions fund. And should our common solutions fund is that all of the companies that were identified by Project Drawdown as being-   Carley Hauck 23:12   And I know a Project Drawdown is you know what it is, but tell our listeners what project or I can even fill in the blank. What do you think, What would you like to do?   James Regulinkski 23:19   I'd love to hear what your answer is.   Carley Hauck 23:23   Well, it's going to be short and sweet. But Drawdown is a book, one of the many wonderful books that Paul Hawken wrote. And basically, in that book, he speaks to 100 different ways that we can actually reverse climate change. And so what you said at the beginning of the interview is like, we already have the solutions, we know what to do. It's just that we have to divest from these industries, from these ways of being that are actually not supporting humanity, and the planet to flourish.   And Paul's newest book, which I think has gotten a little bit more acclaim, and I think it's really just based on the title, which is Regeneration, the first week that regeneration was out. It was a New York Times bestseller, but that feels much more hopeful than drawdown. Right. And so it's it's essentially the same information, but that's my answer for drawdown. What's your answer?   James Regulinkski 24:22   Yeah, I'd say that I'm an engineer by education. So I generally describe it as the open source model that was put together by about 100 or so engineers and scientists, right, I looked at everything we needed to do to get to that point where we're pulling more co2 out of the atmosphere than we're releasing.   And that's, to me a very hopeful point to be at, because it is not just sometimes we talked about direct air capture or these things to sort of, or carbon sequestration, where we're saying oh, the technology will allow us to continue businesses you all, but this is a no, we can change everything. And the natural systems that are already in place will do that carbon sequestration for us. But we have to get to a point where we're not producing as much co2, or other greenhouse gasses.   And some of the answers that came out of this were a little bit surprising. But all of those answers that companies, publicly traded companies are working on a solution, so their primary work is on one of those spaces we put into our climate solutions fund.   Carley Hauck 25:33   Awesome. So for folks that are not maybe as familiar with what ESGs are and investing in ESGs, versus, you know, not investing in ESG is, could you break that down?   James Regulinkski 25:41   Yeah, so ESG is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. So I will talk about what it is, why it's better than the status quo and why we need to move beyond it.   So ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. And it was developed in response to the industry, people demanding that they have some way of responsible investing. And previously, it had been very hand wavy, what counts as a responsible investment. So a framework was put together, that essentially takes a whole bunch of data and compiles it down to a single score and rates every company on the stock market based off of those three categories.   However, if you go to the website of the main data producer, they say there and big font ESG is not a measure of the ethical-ness of a company, they probably don't say ethical this, but it is not the measure of how good a company does. It is a financial risk metric. And so he's saying how much risk is there as it relates to these criterias.   So often in these portfolios, they tend to have fewer of the worst actors. So it's an exclusionary filter. So this is why you should, if you have no other choice, choose an ESG, you're going to have less exposure to the worst companies out there. However, many ESG funds end up with companies like Exxon Mobil, and companies that aren't building the world that we are trying to build that's Fossil Free fuel, fossil fuel free, or the world in which we solve climate change and move our economy away where people thrive and the planet thrives. It is often what are the best actors within what are the best actors within a sector. And what are the end which ones sort of aren't the worst.   So it has its limitations. Again, if you have no other options, ESG can be a way of being less bad. But you'll still end up with exposure to companies that are not really in alignment with building the future we want to see.   Carley Hauck 27:47   I'd like to ask a question, which I think I know the answer to but I'm curious about your perspective. So a company that has invested in becoming B certified right, a B Corp company, they have to hit certain criteria along the ESG. So would you say that if a company for example, Allbirds, I believe is a B Corp. They're then high on the ESG in comparison to a company that hasn't gone through the B Corp certification.   James Regulinkski 28:15   Yeah, in that case, though, it has more to do with the rigorousness of the B Corp certification than that there's even a unified, there isn't a unified document that says anyone who has a good that has an ESG score, it means the same thing across datasets. It's not even a consistent score that every one could look at and go, I know how I rank up in a similar way. So well, I love a B2B court certification, and it will push a company to be a lot better. I guess maybe that's the pun they intended. It is not the same to say that if you have a high ESG score that you would do well on all the processes that would take to get the decertification.   Carley Hauck 28:56   Okay, so let's talk about Coca Cola and Pepsi. Yeah, because being that I do have a core fund and Carbon Collective I noticed that out of all the portfolios out of the companies in my portfolio, Coca Cola and Pepsi were in there. And I was like, Huh, why have they been chosen?   James Regulinkski 29:20   So I'm going to do a little bit nerdy bit about why you see those and why this comes up more than other things. So that when we made the portfolio, the way we constructed it was that we bought it the sector by sector portfolios for each sector of the economy, except for the four highest carbon emitting sectors. And that is why we got rid of fossil fuels and a lot of other bad actors in terms of sort of building the future we wanted to build.   And then that percentage we replaced with our climate solutions, which was all because that fund isn't an ETF. You can't go out and buy it. It is visible in your portfolio as individual shares that we're buying on your behalf. However, when we went to go construct the financial sector and the consumer staples sector, there was a bunch of other companies we had to cut out, there was companies that were involved with private prisons, there are companies that are involved in arms manufacturing, and well, those aren't part of our core, we're solving climate change, they're a part of our we don't, we don't see a world in which we want to be investing in these, even though this is our main focus.   So there are things that we cut out there exclusionary, that sort of are table stakes of being a decent human, that we had to reconstruct that sector of the economy. So when you look at your full shares, a bunch of companies are hidden in ETS, and you don't see those. And then there are some companies that you see that are visible, because we bought, we built this sort of single stock holding collection. So that said, Coca Cola is in there, because the main thesis of the core portfolio is you're broadly invested in the market, you've cut out the worst actors, and what you're left with are companies where it is which will survive and could thrive in a world where we solve climate change, and are receptive to pressure that are worth spending that time on pressuring them.   We don't believe that Exxon Mobil that ConocoPhillips, that these oil producing companies, Dow Industrial that does do manufactures most of the plastic in the world, not the most, but one of the largest that these companies are, are going to be receptive, or that are spending our time and energy trying to change them away from their core business. Right? It's worth it, we don't have enough time, we don't have enough money, we don't have enough resources, to spend all of our effort trying to change these companies to be something completely different from what they are, because there is internal inertia, there is identity wrapped up in it, they're going to be incredibly resistant to change.   But we have seen some of these other companies that are what we call the low carbon economy that are sort of their existence is not threatened, like Coca Cola can still make a bubbly, sugary drink. In a world where we solve climate change, that plastic could be a bioplastic and net zero, and the carbon could be pulled out of the atmosphere to fizz the soda and they could source the wine.   Carley Hauck 32:22   And you're speaking to why I said Why is Pepsi and Coca Cola and mostly because I'm such an anti plastic person. And when I think about the pounds of plastic that had been put into our oceans, yeah, Coca Cola is in fact responsible for a lot of that.   James Regulinkski 32:40   They are. 33% of all plastic production goes to food and packaging, wrappers and containment. We've kind of accepted that as the status quo. And I think we can do a lot better. Like I'll say that straight up. Again, our belief in this case is that the place to stop it in the same way that the place to stop oil is not on the individual level, same buy less oil, it's what stopped producing the oil, let's stop making that economically tenable.   In the same way, the pressure where we weren't the standard we take on sort of the petrochemical side, it's not all the people consuming buying and producing that plastic started it's not that people consuming the plastic it's the people producing it. And ultimately, that is the Dow Chemicals of the world, and the Exxon Mobil, Exxon Mobil mix of massive like a massive percentage of the plastic that goes into those bottles.   And then we do need collective action outside of any political collective action, and we need personal action on alternatives to plastic for Pepsi and Coke. Compostables, reusable, it's like there's a ton of a ton of good options, then start selling this there's syrup and stuff to a soda, like a fizzy drink fizzy maker at home, like lots of ways that we could reimagine the consumption of beverages.   Carley Hauck 34:04   There's also I mean, there's a lot. I mean, it's just going off on a little bit of a tangent.   James Regulinkski 34:10   Let's go, let's go deep.   Carley Hauck 34:11   Well, I guess, before I go into the tangent, and before I go deeper, I'll just summarize, you've answered really well, what an ESG is, which is the question I had and investing in ESG is versus non investing. And so you're giving some really wonderful examples right now from, you know, the Dow and the Exxon, which is not investing in ESGs, to investing and other portfolio companies that are much more aligned with that.   But, you know, one of the things that I think is lovely about living in California is they tend to be trailblazers and some of these systems and even legislature, for example, in January, there was this mandated composting system and program that had to be brought through all of California. And then I saw in the news maybe a few weeks ago that LA has boycotted all plastic like you, they will not give out plastic into go orders in LA. And that started in May of 2022.   And so I think we're going to see more and more and more of that where states where cities are creating different rules. And laws essentially said that we are being more mindful of our consumption.   James Regulinkski 35:28   And that's why we might be at peak plastic, or close to it. Like there's a positive outlook where, especially on the disposable side, where we've sort of reached our tolerance for it, we've seen what the harm is. And it seems it also is a attractable problem, where oftentimes climate change as a whole feels like an intractable problem. It is so large, it has so many different facets, you know, there's the plastic part of it, there's the transportation part of it, there's the construction part of it, you can, you can get overwhelmed by how many different pieces there are involved.   And so I'm excited for what people have pushed for on the plastic front. And when it comes to climate change, it is still not the biggest, like whether you have forks, plastic forks, which I don't think we should have thrown in every to go order. But I also don't think that solving that piece of the problem is enough, or is even the highest leverage point.   Now there's a lot of reasons we can do ethical things that are unrelated to climate change. Like there's, as I said before, there's I don't see, I don't want to live in a world with private prison systems. trafficking, human trafficking, there's lots of things that are important to stand that go beyond climate change that we should think about in our lives. And when we make decisions, the way we construct a carbon collective was focused on saying this, this issue affects all other issues, right? And what is the way we can make the biggest difference on this issue, so that we have the most likelihood of having a large lever arm, but all these other, and all these other issues?   Carley Hauck 37:08   When I was doing research for my book, I spoke to a wonderful person, she's a Stanford professor, and she does a lot around sustainable finance. Her name's Alicia Seiger, she actually, Alicia, if you're listening, you ended up not making the book, but our conversation definitely hit home. And you when you look at the Sustainable Development Goals, being there, what is it 17 of them, I'm trying to remember 17. She said, If we solved for climate, we would solve for all of them, because they all are impacted by climate.   James Regulinkski 37:34   And if we don't solve, which is sometimes more scary, is they exacerbate a lot of a lot of each other a lot of these issues, climate refugee, right? Being a climate refugees will exacerbate like all sorts of I think hate crimes, which I'm really terrified of, or, I mean, what I hope for is that we open up our borders to other people and bring you know welcoming arms as as they deal with the loss of their their land and their livelihoods, etc. But I'm scared about the alternative reality. So that's the sort of the, the nuance of how these play.   No, I don't like to leave things on just, we're not leaving yet. But I don't want to just say these negative things and try to rouse climate fear. I think we have the solutions and examples, both on the technological side, but also on the interpersonal side, also on the how do we develop policies that are? And how do we respond? How do we develop that internal empathy, so that we have the strength when there's a big crisis comes up to to share that out trying to do a call back to earlier in the podcast?   Carley Hauck 38:40   Well, I love that you just kind of switched gears. And I have just a couple more questions before we end, although I'm sure we could, we could talk for many, many hours. So you just talked about this internal empathy piece, which, in my book, I refer to the inner game a lot in the inner game are these qualities that every person can cultivate, and they're their qualities of consciousness.   And so you and I spoke a little bit about this before we hit the record. But the qualities that I focus on are self awareness, emotional intelligence, which incorporates empathy, resilience, which could be growth mindset, well being like how are we taking care of our own well being? And then how do we see that by taking care of ourselves, we're able to therefore take care of others and therefore see the interconnection and how we're taking care of the planet. But then also how are we leading from love and how are we leading from more authenticity and vulnerability, this is all on the inside, and then it shows up on the outside.   And so you know, being a co founder being the fact that you started this business in the midst of the pandemic that you are tackling a really big problem with some fabulous solutions. What is the inner game that you have really cultivated on the inside, for example, maybe there's one of those qualities that you feel like, really has you be the leader, and the person that you want to be?   James Regulinkski 40:16   As you said, then, I was like, Man, I need to do all of these things. What is this person she's describing right now and how can I be them? But for me, empathy has, as I said before, like my job is about supporting others, empathy is so crucial to that. And realizing, when you're at your limits, goes along with the empathy piece, probably more than any other. So that self awareness, I don't want to focus too much on self awareness, because I think that you, we should also be community aware, and there's like these external paths, the self awareness that should be merged in with that concept. But if I don't know my limits, and I can't, as I talked about earlier, bring that to bear, I can't make space for the empathy that I need to have.   And the space we're working in, on climate change is really easy to get overwhelmed by climate anxiety. It's something that is, is very real, and and, you know, is aging us all faster than we can imagine. Because it's an existential problem in a way that we haven't collectively faced many other times. So I, as I said before, I think as a society, and all these questions are kind of as a society, as a society, do we redirect our resources to solving climate change, but also as a society, are we preparing ourselves to to deal with how different the world it's going to be?   Carley Hauck 41:55   Yes, the adaptation, the letting go.   James Regulinkski 41:58   We talked about solving climate change a lot. But solving climate change isn't getting back to the world that my parents grew up in. But that ship sailed, it's creating a world where we cause as little harm and save and make flourish as much as we can, it's about setting us on a new trajectory that can be really beautiful, to solving climate change could be making, you know, better homes and transportation. And that can be a more joyful, exciting world.   But it's also putting us down a path where we do think of ourselves as true stewards of the planet, that it isn't just for us, and how do we create space for the other living creatures here and the other people who aren't rich white Americans, like there's a, a shifting of the consciousness that occurs and like I think of the the internal work I do is sort of like tending to the soil, that I'm going to be one of these plots of land where there's going to be cool new, new realities growing from in the future, and, and taking the time to get to know my limits, and then work on the so I can I can have the space for the empathy is, is how I tend to that soil.   And I don't know, investing is all about imagining a better future. And like, when you invest in a house, or you invest in stocks, or a certain company or thing, I think the future is going to look like this. And we can either invest in that future personally, or literally in our investments, and say, I believe the world is going to look like it did for the last 10 years, or I believe it's gonna get worse, or you can say, I believe it's gonna get better, I'm gonna invest like the world is gonna get a whole lot better on all these fronts. And whether you're doing that through self care, or you're doing that with your dollars, I think that that is what's going to allow us to manifest the solutions, or this new world in which we're, we're able to come off this.   Carley Hauck 43:44   Yeah, well, I, I heard a lot of things I heard self awareness really allows you to self manage some of the climate anxiety that comes up. And therefore there's a greater self empathy that you're able to have, oh, wow, this is hard. There's a lot of freaking uncertainty, and our planet is on fire. And I don't really know how it's gonna work out. But I know that I'm going to be one of those leaders that's charging a new way forward, and getting us to 10x. You know, our investments in a supportive climate.   And, you know, I also felt a ton of climate anxiety. And I wrote the book when Trump was elected because I didn't see a future that I felt excited about. And my nephew also right around the time that I was given the contract for this book. He was four. He looked at me and he said, Auntie Carly, will you help me save the ocean? And I'm like, Ah, I mean, what do you say? You go? No, dude, I'm not doing it, not doing anything. So you're not gonna have it. You're not gonna have coral reefs or dolphins or fish to eat when you're 20. And I did nothing. And I just couldn't. I couldn't say no, I I said yes, yes, yes, I'll help you.   And, you know, this is the number one. What's the word? It's the number one concern of young people right now is climate. And, I do see the consciousness rising. It, you know, I mean, it's been four years since I wrote the book, but like, the consciousness of leaders, the consciousness of business is rising. So it's exciting.   James Regulinkski 45:32     Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think what every business really needs to ask itself is what are we doing about climate change. And unfortunately, what that is often led to in the corporate world is making a pledge, making a pledge, it's unenforceable, and that you're going to be out of your role as a sea level person before or board seat before you have to implement. And the pledges are often focused on like the lowest hanging fruit that everyone already knows about. So they tell it saying solar panels, we're going to replace all of our lights with LEDs, or we're going to buy carbon offsets.   However, every business has some superpower, they have some reason they exist, there's something they're really good at. And the question I think that is, every business should ask that is far more interesting is how do I take that superpower? How do I take that core competency that we have? And use that to address the problem?   Carley Hauck 46:33   For example? What if I was a really large credit card holder? In the US? How could I greatly influence my customers, my shareholders to vote with their dollars and more environmentally, socially? Just ways? I mean, that seems like a perfect opportunity. Right?   James Regulinkski 46:55   Right. So in this case, the the large company that has has a bunch of credit card holders who are making purchases every day, so they might say, hey, we could we could build part of our platform to to help people spend, see the impact the environmental impact of the dollars or spend or see how saving money is actually also, you know, consuming less so saving the planet, or we can use the data that we we collect from there to help help everyone help our members understand collectively where the biggest opportunities are, they can have an integrated opportunity to allow their customers to vote on the issues that were most important to and shape how the money that this company is using is being spent and is influencing the rest of the world. From a shareholder perspective, more and more, the companies that are going to win in this political environmental space is by having a stance is by saying this is what we believe.   And well, let's let us show you how we believe that. So I think ultimately, you win customers that way. And I think that this company has an opportunity to use their that combination of their data and their presence as this as this provider of financial services to to enable better spending habits for the planet. And that might well have a much larger impact than any amount of commitment to buy zero carbon energy.   Carley Hauck 48:22   Totally. I I 100% agree. And you know, two of the companies that I highlight in my book that I did a lot of research that are doing some of that already, Bank of the West Bank, located actually in San Francisco, and they were highly influenced by BNP, which is a very environmentally responsible French bank. Yeah, but Bank of the West and the last year that I was consulting and working for them, they came up with an ATM card that was 1% for the planet. So every single purchase, there was some of that going back towards the planet.   And then we think about Salesforce, which is also one of the companies I highlight in the book, you know, Salesforce was having this very large conference called Dreamforce, every year where they'd have 100,000 people descend on the city of San Francisco from all over the world. Well, in 2019, which was the last in person version of this that I was attending. They had a huge focus on the SDGs. And so they were educating all these people on the benefits of actually aligning their business for sustainable development. And I mean, that's just one way to have major influence, in addition to buying the Salesforce, you know, CRM to help small businesses and large businesses. So I think that's kind of speaking to some of the examples that all companies can be leading from that place.   James Regulinkski 49:48   Right. And financing companies that deal with finance are shaping what happens. The investments that they're making are saying what is possible and what's impossible the rules they said, around how money is lent could shape whether a renewable energy project gets financed, so we talk a little bit about on the on the lending on the credit card side, but they also have you also have a banking operation, then you have another area where you can help accelerate or make a more positive planet for everyone. And I am inspired by the examples that you're giving about folks, companies who really dig in and say, What can we what can we do? That could, I could talk to you about many more of really exciting places where companies have have stepped up and thought creatively?   Carley Hauck 50:35   Awesome. Do you want to tell me one more?   James Regulinkski 50:37   Oh, one that I love, it's a little bit dated now. But Interface Carpet was this carpet company that looked at how they could make carpets that had this problem where they just the strict regulations on how much pollutants could come out of the water. And so they made a target to get to the point where they were, water was cleaner coming out of the factory than coming in. So their process actually cleaned the water as opposed to dumped the you know, we're just under the legal limit of whatever toxins were happening. Were in there, they looked at ways to use carpeting as, as more of almost like a service as opposed to as a as a consumable and taking responsibility for the end of life and recycling all their own materials.   Now, each of those steps where you say, I'm going to go, and like we are a carpeting company, that we you know, we just provide this thing that gets us to say, oh, no, we are a company that exists in this world of limited resources, how do we make it better? How do we take responsibility for what we have? And not? I will I will pay for someone else to deal with this problem. But I am the ultimate.   Carley Hauck 51:54   Yeah, I'm we're taking responsibility, and we're gonna make it a better product.   James Regulinkski 51:59   And it's so easy, like we talk about companies as separate entities. But I think it's really, that alienates the reality, which is, companies are made up of individuals. And each of those individuals has a set of beliefs and has a conscience and wants to live in a beautiful world and wants to be actualized as a human being.   And so, it's so much easier when we have a bad guy that it's a company. But it also means that it's hard for us to imagine change, because we don't understand how companies think. But I do understand how people think that I can empathize with their struggles and the pressures they're under and maybe help them see a different alternative way of being.   Carley Hauck 52:38   And that's why I love working with leaders and supporting teams. And I really feel like the greatest lever I can pull in this lifetime is supporting the shift in the hearts and minds of leaders and businesses. Because just what you said, there is a consciousness. And it can either be for good, or it can be for evil. I mean, I don't like using evil. But let's bring in the Star Wars, I'm definitely on the Skywalker Skywalker path.   There we go. Well, James, fellow Jedi. Thank you so much.   James Regulinkski 53:16   That was a lot of fun, Carley.   Carley Hauck 53:18   Thank you so much, James. I know, again, we could talk about a lot of things. But is there anything else that you'd like to leave folks before we end?   James Regulinkski 53:28   I guess the startup hat wearing co-founder part of me is like, one more time if you guys are all interested by what you heard here, go check out Carbon Collective. If you can watch this 401k program, which means you can absolutely if you don't invest personally, you can also help maybe get your company to change how they do their investments.   But also, even if you don't check us out, because you want to work with us, there's a lot of resources on our website, there are resources on how you can do this yourself. There are resources on how you can talk about these issues with other folks. We believe that this problem is more important than our success as a business. So we try to be really transparent and give you everyone the tools to be more conscientious about how they use their money, or invest our money. So if it's only to see what those resources are, head over to carbon collective.co. And I hope that it's helpful.   Carley Hauck 54:27   Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll leave all those links in the show notes.   Thank you, James, for your time, your service, your vision, and creating an easy way for those of us that really care about social justice, environmental responsibility that we can vote with our dollars and support capitalism to be more conscious. There are many links in the show notes and resources. And I've added a few more including this amazing new startup called Symbrosia that actually supports us to have different ways of reducing our carbon footprint through offsets.   Lastly, because of my investment, and consulting with Bank of the West for a few years supporting leaders, teams and culture change, I wanted to give them a plug because they really are a wonderful example of a company leading from a higher responsibility to people and planet. I was privileged to support Bank of the West for three and a half years and in October 2018, the bank pledged to provide 1 billion in financing for clean, efficient and renewable energy products over a five year period. Over that five year financing initiative, their customers' demand for sustainable financing exceeded their expectations, and they hit the 1 billion mark more than two years ahead of schedule.   As a result of this brave action, the Conservation Alliance, which is a consortium of more than 250 businesses in the outdoors industry, announced that it was ditching Bank of America for Bank of the West based on their divestment of coal, tar sands and Arctic drilling. While banks can often seem like opaque institutions, it's important to remember that everything that banks do is dictated by decisions made by humans, and what humans finance today will define the world we and our children and grandchildren live in tomorrow.   I think there's a lot more opportunity for credit card companies, for financial institutions, for tech institutions, to really put their money behind causes that really matter. That's what I'm rooting for. That's what I'm standing for. And as always, thank you so much for listening, for joining this community and I would love to stay connected with you. So please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Carley Hauck and you can also go to my website, carleyhauck.com.   Wishing you a wonderful summer and until we meet again you the light and shine the light.  

Brady Robinson Brady began working in outdoor education in the mid-'90s at a boy's camp in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. He went on to work with Outward Bound for over a decade, spent some time guiding, and instructed with NOLS for a few years. After leaving fieldwork, he has primarily worked in conservation as the Executive Director of the Access Fund for ten years and has positions with Tompkins Conservation and the Conservation Alliance. Brady is a gifted climber. Before having a family, he spent many years chasing bold rock and alpine first ascents in Patagonia,  Pakistan and other far-flung mountain ranges. Many of his partners were some of the most elite professional climbers, including Conrad Anker, Steph Davis, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Jimmy Chin. These days Brady is taking a few months off to focus on being a dad, working through life transitions, reading, taking online courses, and reflecting on what he wants to give to his kids, himself, and the world in the next chapter of his career.Ed RobersonEd currently serves as Conservation Director at Palmer Land Conservancy, regional land and water conservation organization in Colorado. He is also the founder of Mountain & Prairie, a podcast/blog that has been recognized by groups including the Aspen Institute, High Country News, Montana Governor's Office, and more.  Ed was a student with NOLS during a 1999 Semester in the Pacific Northwest, in which Brady was one of his instructors for the backpacking and mountaineering section. He has stayed in touch with Brady over the years. Ed currently lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two daughters.  

In today's podcast, we will discuss the balance of conservation and recreation, and what recreational enthusiasts can do to protect the lands that are important to them. Joining us is John Sterling who severed for 17 years as the Executive Director of the Conservation Alliance. Prior to that, he was the Director of Environmental Programs at Patagonia. ------------------------------- This podcast is produced by Dirty Freehub, a nonprofit organization that publishes hand-curated (and great!) gravel cycling route guides. Our mission is to connect gravel cyclists to where they ride through stories about culture, history, people, places, and lands with the hope that they will become involved as advocates, volunteers, or donors with organizations that protect and preserve recreation spaces. Our Podcast Channel / The Connection Our Route Guides / Dirty Freehub Our Ask / Donate

Is it possible to support conservation efforts and be a tourist at the same time? Dr. Aireona Raschke of the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance (CAZCA) shares how you can do both! We talked with Aireona about what ecotourism can look like when recreating in beautiful places, from both perspectives of sustainability for the habitat and for community support. Sometimes this looks like helping map invasive plants while you're hiking to assist land managers, choosing wisely with your own landscaping decisions, and volunteering with local groups to do conservation work; other times it looks like donating to an organization or spreading awareness about the work they're doing. Find out more about CAZCA and follow along with the work they're doing to protect and care for natural, open spaces that serve the communities and protect the habitat of the Sonoran Desert in Central Arizona.Check out the principles of responsible recreation.Visit Aireona's blog, Nightborn Travel, where she showcases her own responsible tourism adventures.

Conor McElyea is the Director of Partnerships and Membership with the Conservation Alliance. The Conservation Alliance is a membership-based non-profit that helps fund conversation efforts across the continent. To date, they have protected 73 million acres, 3,576 river miles, remove or halted 37 dams, purchased 18 climbing areas, and designated five marine reserves. Conor discusses the rise in popularity of cause marketing, the opportunities for brands that are members of the alliance, and the exciting work being done at Public Lands for conservation. Follow the Alliance: @conservationalliance Produced by: @portsideproductions @backcountrymarketing @coleheilborn

Welcome to the antepenultimate Tuesday of 2021, also doing business as the 348th day of the year. This is the 294th installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement. There are many more to come in the future due to the certainty that where will be items to write about far into the future. I’m your host, Sean Tubbs.Charlottesville Community Engagement needs fuel in the form of new subscriptions, paid or unpaid. Sign up today to keep this going! On today’s show:The Regional Transit Partnership ponders a potential future as a regional transit authorityThe University of Virginia picks two sites in Albemarle and one site in Charlottesville on which to build affordable housing The Rivanna Conservation Alliance publishes its 2021 water quality reportRegional broadband expansion projects nets $79M in state fundingIn today’s first Patreon-fueled shout-out:Winter is here, and now is the time to think about keeping your family warm through the cold Virginia months. Make sure you are getting the most out of your home with help from your local energy nonprofit, LEAP. LEAP wants you and yours to keep comfortable all year round, and offers FREE home weatherization to income- and age-qualifying residents. If you’re age 60 or older, or have an annual household income of less than $74,950, you may qualify for a free energy assessment and home energy improvements such as insulation and air sealing. Sign up today to lower your energy bills, increase comfort, and reduce energy waste at home!UVA Housing initiativeThe University of Virginia has announced three sites upon which it will work with a developer to build affordable housing units, two of which are in Albemarle County. They are:The low-density Piedmont housing site on Fontaine AvenueThe corner of Wertland and 10th StreetProperties at the North Fork Research Park President Jim Ryan made the announcement this morning in a written statement.“Economic growth over many decades has had a profound effect on housing in the Charlottesville-Albemarle community, and we are committed to working with community partners to create more housing intended for local workforce and community members who have been priced out of the local housing market,” Ryan said. “We believe these sites may be suitable for affordable housing, to potentially include mixed-use development.”J.J. Wagner, UVA’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said these sites were selected in part because they were not in any other strategic plan. There’s a website where people can submit feedback. (website) According to a press release on UVA Today, Piedmont would likely be completely redeveloped except for an existing structure. The Piedmont property is on the north side of Fontaine Avenue and is within Albemarle County. UVA owns this site outright. The University of Virginia Foundation purchased 1010 Wertland Street from developer Keith Woodard in February 2017 for $4 million, which was well over the $1.85 million assessment for that year.  That 0.4 acre property is currently occupied by an apartment complex.  The foundation also owns two other properties at this corner, one of which is currently vacant. The North Fork Research Park currently does not have any residential units. This past March, the foundation issued a request for proposals for a firm to help rezone portions of the property to Neighborhood Model District zoning. “Coordination with the UVA Affordable Housing Task Force will be required,” reads the RFP. Existing leases at both Piedmont and 1010 Wertland Street will be honored for their duration. UVA or its foundation will donate the land though a ground lease and will not contribute any funding to the projects. The next step is for the UVA Foundation to issue a request for qualifications for potential builders. Initial work for the project was conducted by the firm Northern Urban Real Estate Ventures. That company is now working with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority on a master plan for sustainability. These three sites are the only ones under consideration at this time. UVA spokesman Brian Coy said they will work with the selected firm to meet the goal of building between 1,000 and 1,500 units. Broadband expansion The Thomas Jefferson Planning District has been awarded a $79 million grant from the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative for a project to expand broadband to nearly every home across a 13-county area. Governor Ralph Northam made that announcement yesterday as part of a $722 million funding package for similar Internet expansion meetings across the Commonwealth. The TJPDC was the lead applicant for the RISE project, which stands for Regional Internet Service Expansion. Several localities including Albemarle are contributing a total of $33.5 million as a match for the public-private partnership involving Firefly Fiber Broadband, the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, and Dominion Energy. Over the next three years, more than 5,000 miles of fiber will be installed across an area that spans from portions of Campbell County to the south to Goochland County to the east to Greene County to the north. In all, an additional 36,283 homes will be connected. They will then ne able then purchase Internet from Firefly Fiber. TJPDC’s award is the third largest in the state. (read the grant application) (Governor’s press release) Avon Street DevelopmentTonight, the Albemarle Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on a rezoning for a planned residential district in the 1800 block of Avon Street Extended. Andy Reitelbach is a senior planner with the county.“It involves a request to rezone two parcels of land on Avon Street right south of Avinity,” Reitelbach said. “The two parcels together total about 3.6 acres and the applicant is requesting a maximum of 85 two-family and multifamily resident units.” Reitelbach made his comments at the 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee from November 18. So did Kelsey Schlein with Shimp Engineering, the firm taking the project through the review process. “It’s designated urban density residential in the Comprehensive Plan so at 24 dwelling unit per acre with a maximum density on the property, we’re within the recommended density range for urban density residential,” Schlein said. Schlein said there will be a mix of housing types with triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes, and multifamily units. None of the buildings will exceed three stories. She noted that the county has adopted a corridor study to make the area more hospitable to people on bikes or on foot. (read the study)“Since there is an existing sidewalk in front of Avinity that kind of extends in front of the elementary school, we’re proposing to continue that network,” Schlein said. “However, we’ve provided enough right of way for a multi use path improvement so if there’s ever a comprehensive reimagining of the pedestrian network on the [east] side of Avon Street, this application will have provided the right of way for that.” Some members of the 5th and Avon CAC expressed concerns about traffic, the lack of a playground, and the possibility the application did not include open space. The Planning Commission meets virtually at 6 p.m. tonight. (meeting info)New look for tourism websiteThe quasi-government entity charged with marketing the region to tourists has updated their website. The Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau launched an refreshed version last week of visitcharlottesville.org. The designer is a firm called Tempest as we learn in a press release.“In addition to better serving visitors and industry partners, the new website will also reduce costs for the CACVB, in anticipation of a significant budget decrease projected for Fiscal Year 2023,” reads the release. “The reduction in budget for the upcoming fiscal year is a direct result of decreased transient occupancy tax collection from local lodging properties, due to the impacts of COVID-19.” The Bureau is governed by a Board of Directors that currently includes two members of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and two City Councilors. In October, the CACVB Board discussed reducing that to one elected official from each locality in favor of more representatives from the hospitality industry. For more, read Allison Wrabel’s October 25 story in the Daily Progress. For more on the hospitality industry, read a story from me from October 30 on the archive site Information Charlottesville.  The CACVB Board next meets on December 20. *General Assembly 2022With Republicans in control of the House of Delegates next year, that means Delegate Rob Bell (R-Albemarle) will chair a major committee. Yesterday, incoming House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Woodstock) assigned Bell to chair the Courts of Justice Committee and made five other appointments. (release)Delegate Lee Ware (R-Powhatan) will chair Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural ResourcesDelegate Jay Leftwich (R-Chesapeake) will head General LawsDelegate Bobby Orrock (R-Caroline) will chair Health, Welfare, and InstitutionsDelegate Kathy Byron (R-Bedford) will head Labor and CommerceDelegate Terry Austin (R-Botetourt) will chair Transportation. RCA reportThe Rivanna Conservation Alliance has issued its annual stream health report based on water quality monitoring from 2018 through 2021. Based on their data, the number of impaired streams increased. (read the report)“The percentage of our sampled streams that failed to meet water quality standards for aquatic life grew from 68 percent in last year’s report to 82 percent in this one,” reads the report. However, the document acknowledges difficulty in collecting data in 2018 and 2019 due to heavy rain events that scoured stream beds and banks, as well as difficulty collecting data during the pandemic. “Most notably, seven of the nine sites that moved from an assessment of very good or good down to fair were affected by unusually large hatches of black fly larvae that reduced biodiversity in our samples,” the report continues. Another item of note in 2020 is the completion of a 15-year study on the long-term effects of large-scale water quality improvements such as stream restoration, planting of buffers along streams, or upgrades to wastewater treatments plants. That’s based on looking at all 50 monitoring sites and finding that those that improved were close to some form of improvement. More shout-outsYou’re listening to Charlottesville. Community Engagement. Let’s continue today with two more Patreon-fueled shout-outs. The first comes a long-time supporter who wants you to know:"Today is a great day to spread good cheer: reach out to an old friend, compliment a stranger, or pause for a moment of gratitude to savor a delight."The second comes from a more recent supporter who wants you to go out and read a local news story written by a local journalist. Whether it be the Daily Progress, Charlottesville Tomorrow, C-Ville Weekly, NBC29, CBS19, WINA, or some other place I’ve not mentioned - the community depends on a network of people writing about the community. Go learn about this place today!Regional transit authority?It has been some time since I’ve had an update on transit issues and now is the time to do so. Earlier this month, the members of the Regional Transit Partnership got an informal recommendation from a consultant that it may be time to move from an advisory body into a decision-making body that can raise its own funds. Before we get into all of that, though, there is still time to take two surveys to get your input on the Regional Transit Vision for the Charlottesville Area. That’s a project being led by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to “evaluate transit service” in the region in order to “establish a clear long-term vision for efficient, equitable, and effective transit service.” One survey is on transition visioning and the other is an interactive map that asks the question: “What are the long-term transit needs for the Charlottesville region?” “You’re able to kind of sort of pinpoint on a map some issues or wants or desires regarding transit,” said Tim Brulle, a project manager for the vision who works for the firm AECOM. “We are using the public survey as part of our main avenue for that public feedback right now.” The project is being funded by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation with additional funds from the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Albemarle County is conducting its own separate study, and Charlottesville Area Transit has pending route changes that have not yet been implemented. On December 2, 2021, the Jefferson Area Regional Transit Partnership got a status update on the studies, beginning with the Regional Transit Vision. As of that date, only about a hundred and thirty people had responded. (watch this meeting)Also as part of the meeting, Scudder Wagg of the firm JWA briefed the partnership members on the fact that many other transit systems in Virginia are regional. In this community, there are three major transit systems in Jaunt, Charlottesville Area Transit and the University Transit Service. Wagg suggested a reorganization across multiple communities that could yield more funding for expansion. “If you are to think about a regional funding source and a regional funding agency, then you would start to need to think about this on more of a regional scale,” Wagg said. “That’s where we want to help you consider how you might address that.”Wagg said the combined operating budgets of CAT and Jaunt are around $16 million, with about half of that funding coming from local sources. He suggested the total amount could increase if the community took steps to create an authority which can issue bonds. Wagg said three other regions in Virginia have managed to create authorities to expand transit and fund other transportation improvements. “Northern Virginia is using a combination of a sales tax, a grantor’s tax, and bond proceeds,” Wagg said. Legislation passed the General Assembly in 2009 to allow creation of a Regional Transit Authority, but a bill to allow a local referendum on a one-cent tax increase did not pass that year. According to the legislation, the authority could expand to include Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson counties. (take a look)In the next General Assembly, Charlottesville is seeking a referendum for a one-cent sales tax for the purposes of funding the reconfiguration of the city’s schools. The director of Charlottesville Area Transit would encourage elected officials to pursue additional sources for funding through an authority. “This is an avenue we do need to explore and consider seriously to make sure that this  happens  eventually in the next three to five years,” Williams said. Albemarle Supervisor Diantha McKeel said the point of the Regional Transit Partnership was to prepare for an eventual next step.“When this Regional Transit Partnership, the intent was for it to be the first step in working towards an authority,” McKeel said.Becca White, director of Parking and Transportation at UVA, said the University Transit Service serves a very small footprint as a “last mile” service to relieve congestion and to shuttle people from parking lots. However, she said there are some portions of the city covered, including Fontaine Avenue and Ivy Road. The members of the Partnership informally directed Wagg to base the next set of potential scenarios for expanded service based on a theoretical $30 million budget.“We’ll have two scenarios,” Wagg said. “We’ll have maps showing where would routes go, how frequently, all of that sort of stuff. And then what would the outcomes of some of those things be in terms of how many more jobs could people in Greene County reach in an hour by transit or how many more people would have access to different kinds of transit services in different places?”A second round of public engagement for the Regional Transit Vision will begin early next year and the study is to be completed by the summer of 2022. Want to help influence it? Fill out those surveys! Resources for Regional Transit Vision Plan: A stakeholder meeting was held on October 7 and around 30 people attended (watch the video)A public meeting was held on November 18 and 20 members of the public participated (watch the video) (view the presentation)A land use assessment was produced by the consultantsA transit propensity technical memo was also produced by the consultantsSpecial thanks to Jenn Finazzo for recording some of the voice work today. Very much appreciated! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Bryan Papé founded MiiR in 2010 with a dream to create more beauty and generosity in the world. Having inherited his grandfather's entrepreneurial spirit, it wasn't until a life-or-death ski accident that Bryan fully realized his vision to build a legacy of using business as a tool to positively impact the world. MiiR is a generosity-driven company that creates thoughtfully-designed drinkware through its social and environmental mission. Through relentless innovation, it has developed an iconic line of drinkware products that combine beauty, performance and sustainability. Current partners include Patagonia, Blue Bottle Coffee, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Nike and Nordstrom. MiiR is sold in 49 countries. Every MiiR product sold helps fund trackable projects around the world, and to-date has granted $1.6 million to nonprofit organizations focused on social and environmental causes. MiiR is a certified B Corp, 1% For The Planet Member, Climate Neutral Certified and a member of The Conservation Alliance. Free Enneagram Assessment: https://assessment.truestrategy.info Contact us: info@truestrategy.info

Colin Sproul, president of the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance, spoke with host Jeff Douglas about why he disagrees with the research being done by Dalhousie University to collect some of the lobster caught in Sipekne'katik First Nation's FSC traps.

Blue River features oral histories and the ecological and cultural history of the river. In conjunction with the Renew the Blue Campaign, the documentary brings attention to the river, its needs, and the many organizations and communities working to improve it.The documentary promotes positive outdoor experiences, reminds people of the river's proud past and inspires them about its future, In 2020 it won a Mid-America EMMY in the Public Affairs – Special/Program category. After the film, meet local renowned filmmaker, Michael Price, English Landing Films, who captured the beauty and the challenges of the river in all seasons. He is best known for his films seen on KCPT Evicted and A City Divided

News Brief April 12 | JH Conservation Alliance Outlines Vision for Northern South Park by KHOL

The Zambesia Conservation Alliance (ZCA) was founded in March 2020 by Robin, Luke and Suzanne Brown. Their diverse skill set is evident from their biographies. This dynamic founding team foresaw the need for a passion-driven, well-coordinated, and concerted wide scale effort to address some of the most significant challenges facing wildlife conservation and community upliftment in the Zambesia region. The Zambesia area spans more than 1,2 million square kilometres, across 7 countries and is home to some of the globe's most pristine biodiversity, which includes the largest remaining African elephant population on Earth and 10% of the world's carnivore population. Habitat loss is the biggest threat to this landscape.

Adeline Fox is the president of the Big Bend Conservation Alliance. Originally established to fight against a proposed gas pipeline cutting across Texas, today they work to protect land, water, dark skies and cultural heritage through grass routes projects.  More info: https://www.bigbendconservationalliance.org/ Podcast partner: www.modernhuntsman.com www.byronpace.com Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/byronpace Contact: podcast@paceproductionsuk.com

Host Craig Lubow talks to Jill Erickson, Executive Director of Heartland Conservation Alliance about issues and projects the organization is currently working on. Heartland Conservation Alliance is an urban land trust so that we can protect lands identified in regional plans. We are currently focusing our efforts in the Blue River Watershed. Land trusts protect […] The post Heartland Conservation Alliance appeared first on KKFI.

Casey Sheahan currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Simms Fishing LLC. Casey, a long-time outdoor industry veteran, came to Simms from his post as President of Keen Footwear. Prior to his 9 years with Patagonia and seven-year tenure at Kelty, he served as Vice-President of Marketing for Merrell Footwear and was Category Marketing Manager at Nike ACG from 1990-1994. In addition to his diverse footwear, apparel and equipment management background, Casey brings a breadth of skills to the fields of writing, marketing and sales. He has edited for several outdoor-inspired publications including Runner's World, Marathoner and Nordic World and was editor and publisher of POWDER Magazine in the late 1980s. He is aligned with a number of environmental organizations and served as President of the Conservation Alliance, a non-profit organization of outdoor businesses whose membership dues support grassroots citizen-action groups and their efforts to protect wild and natural areas. In the past, Casey casey has been the senior advisor to Backbone Media in Carbondale, Colorado, and now serves on the advisory boards of Keen Footwear, Johnson Outdoors, Outdoor Research, Vibram SPA, and the 5 Point Film Festival. Casey is a lifelong skier and fly-fishing enthusiast. He has a personal affinity for cycling, paddling and all water-related activities, as well as backpacking, camping and spending time with his family. Please enjoy my conversation with Casey Sheahan.

Leveraging Business to Protect Wild Places: A Conversation with Brady Robinson, Executive Director of the Conservation Alliance.  Brady Robinson is a conservationist, climber and educator whose career has included over a decade at Outward Bound and 11 years running the Access Fund, the national organization that keeps climbing areas open and conserved. He was Director of Strategy and Development for Tompkins Conservation, which creates terrestrial and marine national parks in Chile and Argentina, reintroduces missing species and conserves biodiversity, and now serves as the Executive Director of The Conservation Alliance, which works with businesses to fund and partner with organizations to protect wild places. For this episode of the Impact Report, Bard MBA's Sean Reckert speaks with Brady about the need for better representation, diversity and inclusion in the conservation space and the future of this work in light of the pandemic. ImpactReportPodcast.com  

Today I'm speaking with Roy Notowitz, President of Noto Group Executive Search. Roy has spent nearly his entire career in the Pacific Northwest. His work includes founding the Generator Group, he spent time in recruiting at Nike, he's is a recipient of the SGB 40 Under 40 award and has his own podcast How I Hire.   Facebook Twitter Instagram   The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Show Notes How'd you get introduced to the outdoors? What was your first outdoor experience like? I feel really lucky. I grew up in upstate New York in a small town called Manlius, the Manilius Fayetteville area, which is just outside of Syracuse. And, you know, it was at a time when kids would roam free in the woods, and around the neighborhood. It was a pretty standard neighborhood, but we had woods nearby. We built sledding tracks and we played baseball in the street and in our backyards, we rode bikes. Basically it was a time when parents would just kick their kids out of the house all day and say come home at night for dinner. We were a big ski family, so my parents were, they weren't hippies, but they acted like it. We had a garden and they went jogging before everyone else was jogging. We had a very active and healthy family lifestyle, and we would ski every weekend. Sometimes twice on the weekends or sometimes once during a weeknight. In Syracuse, there are a few different mountains within 20, 30-minute drive. We went to this place called Labrador mountain, “Ski more at Labrador”, was their slogan. And it was like 800 vert, they had a T-bar and chairlift that was super slow. That was a big part of my early outdoor experience. And, and then in my teens, my parents had bought this little fishing cabin in the thousand islands, which is about two and a half hours north of Syracuse, just outside of Brockville, Ontario. We kept our boat on the US side and we'd cross the river and check-in at customs then go to this little Island. And there's a 30 mile stretch of the Saint Lawrence River that flows out of Lake Ontario, bordering New York and Ontario. And there are about 1800 small to medium-sized islands with little cabins and stuff on them. A lot of them aren't winterized, ours wasn't. I saved up all this lawn mowing money that I earned to buy a small aluminum fishing boat and with a 15 horse Evinrude motor. It was my obsession. I became obsessed with fishing for largemouth and smallmouth bass and Northern pike. And there's a 10 mile stretch of that river that I know like the back of my hand to this day. I went back there a few summers ago and I still know where all the Shoals are and where all my fishing spots are. I have a nautical chart framed in my office. It's changed a lot because of the zebra mussels and the cormorants. The whole ecosystem in the Saint Lawrence River hs changed. It's sad in the last 15 years the river has really declined. But that's my happy place. I can still picture the early morning fog burning off the river and then loons and the carp jumping and casting and trolling along the weed beds. What was your first outdoor job? I went to Potsdam college, which is right on the edge of the Adirondack Park. There are 9,000 square miles of lakes, rivers, and mountains, and it's close to the Saint Lawrence River. So I was able to continue to go to the cabin in summers. Potsdam was part of the State University of New York, and they had a satellite outdoor recreation campus on a little Lake called Star Lake. It was about 35, 40-minute drive from campus. Students would go there on the weekends to take classes, physical education classes. So they had a tiny ski hill with the little J bar. And I never taught before. So I basically had to teach how to put your skis on how to fall, how to get up, how to stop and turn. Then in the warmer months, I stayed there in the summer and taught canoeing and sailing, mostly Sunfish and Snarks. I was always active in student activities. I was on the camp board, which is the student board for that outdoor recreation facility. I was a student orientation leader, I volunteered on the local rescue squad. So I had a lot of activities. I was more social than academic at that point. Figuring out a lot of things and whatever you could fit in around the fund. Tell our listeners how you became an outdoor industry recruiter. It's an interesting story and it's part luck, being in the right place at the right time. And it starts in grad school. After Potsdam, I went to Virginia Tech and earned a master's degree in education with a focus on education administration. During my graduate studies, I was really drawn to the career services center and found an interest in how students formed career aspirations and how people figured out what they wanted to do and making the connection between higher education and the business world, which I think to this day, there's still a bit of a disconnect. The challenge was I really didn't have a lot of business experience or career experience. So I don't know if my obsession was because I really didn't know what I was going to do with my career or if I really wanted to help people. Anyway, after grad school, I drove my pickup truck across the country with my dog to Portland, Oregon. It was kind of on a whim, I identified the Pacific Northwest as a place I wanted to be. I checked out Seattle and Portland and Portland just felt kind of right. When I got here, it was July 1995. My first job was pumping gas for five and a quarter an hour. And I also got a second job selling shoes. Hiking and walking shoes at the walking company. I sold the European comfort shoes, mostly like Echo's, Mephisto, and Clarks. They were really innovative and differentiated at the time, they used better materials and construction. I enjoyed the customer interaction and I was always selling in the top 10% nationwide because I'm competitive. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed that job. In fact, I got employee discounts from that manager for maybe 10 years after I worked there. But after about six months of working there, I landed a desk job as a recruiter in a staffing agency in downtown Portland. It was kind of an old school Jerry McGuire kind of staffing agency. On my desk, I had a phone, a shoebox of three by five cards that were blank, a phone book, and a phone. They had computers at the time, but not at that company. We faxed resumes to companies and we took out classified ads on the job. I was marketing candidates to companies. And at the time even candidates paid fees, part of the fees to companies. So very different, but, and it took me about a year to really figure out was I very commission focused. After a year, I got a call. I don't know if it's divine intervention or just luck, but a recruiter called asking if I would be interested in that position at Nike. And in my interview with the HR manager at Nike apparel, he asked, what do you know about apparel footwear? So I took the shoe off of my foot and I started taking him through all of the things I just talked about, the materials, the construction. And he could tell that I had a passion for the product. And he literally said his name's Adam Baker, and every day to this day, I still thank him for that opportunity. But he said, “Okay kid, I'll give you a shot”. So anyway, I landed in the apparel division, right when Nike was shifting from selling tee shirts and accessories with footwear to becoming a functional apparel brand. And that really enhanced the performance of athletes with the fit, the fabrication, and materials. Dry fit when had just come out. So the apparel team was really small in comparison to the recruiting team and the rest of the company. The apparel business grew from 400 million to 3 billion during the time I was there and we recruited about 1200 people in those three years. I learned a ton, it was a great experience. And of course, now it's one of the most successful apparel companies in the world. What inspired you to continue down that outdoor industry recruiter path? That's a great question. I saw a need, to be honest, in recruiting. It's very inconsistent, the results when we were partnering with external firms. You know, the way they represented the brand, Nike was very particular about that. The way that these candidates are screened, we like to use structured interviewing and competencies and, a lot of recruiters were kind of just pitching candidates. And I felt like if we could create a more consistent and more professional service model, sort of like there's no bar associated student association or MBA or any accreditation that's meaningful in recruiting. So I wanted to take it up a notch. And what I realized is there's an opportunity to act more like an in house recruiting team to bring these fortune 500 best practices, to bring more consistency, to have a service delivery model with the accountabilities and, and deliverables, and to really help companies figure out where they want to go and how they want to get there and bringing world-class recruiting resources to small and midsize growth-oriented companies. So that's kind of what my first vision was for The Generator Group and to a large degree that's the vision here as well. So I started The Generator Group and ran that for about nine years. I had two partners and then in 2009, I branched off and started The Noto Group, We're coming up on 11 years here.   What are a couple of the accomplishments you're most proud of? We passed our 10 year anniversary last year and I'm really proud of the team we've built. The team is really my biggest asset here. The level of experience that they bring is significant and clients really trust us. They turn to us when they need an experienced partner that they can trust. And when we do great work, we get more work. There are three things that kind of come to mind. One is being the first outdoor industry professional services firm to become a B Corp, or at least the first outdoor industry recruiting firm, for sure. We certified in 2013, and we've recertified three times and scored higher each time. They get harder every time. And we also, for the last six years in a row have earned B Corp's best for workers award. So this coupled with the opportunity to work with so many great clients has been huge in helping me attract top-level talent to the firm. And then the second accomplishment I think was, a decision I made shortly after I started this firm to really expand our client base beyond the athletic and outdoor industry. So we do work in parallel consumer sectors, such as food beverage, grocery, natural products, restaurant hospitality. And this really aligns us with the way PE firms operate and the way law firms operate with consumer practices and the way investment bankers work. So this strategy has really helped us create more stability for the firm, which then allows us to invest more in the team, the tools, and the causes we care about. And it also enables us to sort of cross-pollinating to generate a more diverse range of candidates for clients. And that's really smart too because it gives you a lot of opportunities to bring a broader resource, broader opportunities to both the client and the applicant, right? Yeah. You might see someone who comes in wanting to focus on outdoor and athletics, but you look at them and you talk to them and you realize, you know what, you're going to fit way better over here. Right? One of the differentiators is that we put a lot of energy and effort into cultivating and engaging this talent ecosystem. We have over 10,800 people following us on LinkedIn. We have a monthly newsletter that goes out to 8,000 people. We have web traffic, like 2,500 to 3000 people a month hitting our sites. So we have a really engaged talent network. And I think that's a huge differentiator for us. I think the third thing I'm most proud of is launching our leadership consulting practice. So last year and in the past 12 months, we've really been working on communicating and integrating our new capabilities and it's been really well received. It started with a colleague and actually a former client, Dr. Ted Freeman, who's based out in New York. He worked at Eileen Fisher, which is basically like the Patagonia of the fashion world. They're a highly sustainable women's fashion brand, and very mission and purpose-driven. We did some work there, some leadership, a CFO, and a board position, and Ted was our client and he branched off on his own. He has a background in leadership development, coaching, and assessment. And I started thinking about how we could wrap these services around our recruiting and our search work to create greater success for clients and to get people ramped up faster and to be more effective, faster. So he, and a bunch of his colleagues that he collaborates with have really helped us broaden and deepen our work around leadership assessment, onboarding, integration, leadership development, and coaching. Our clients are engaging him and his team of colleagues to help do really meaningful work. And so as the economy recovers, I'm confident that this will become even more central. Leadership is a word that's used very lightly. I've found over the years, the more energy effort and thought that you put into hiring and, and developing and, bringing the team along. The more results you get, it's just part of that. The better the team works together too. I think. There's a lot of things that can derail teams and a lot of issues around culture and communication and, people can be more effective. I think that's what companies are realizing now. They don't have a lot of resources to hire a lot of people, especially moving forward. So they have to make sure that they get it right, and that the team is as effective as it can be. You probably have a pretty good read on what's going on in the job market. What are you reading in the tea leaves right now? How's it looking? Um, it's a mixed bag. So there's obviously a significant amount of job loss. And to be honest, I don't think that everyone is going to get hired back. Companies are not going to be like, okay, well, let's get back to work and let's use the same strategy and the same people, it's going to be a complete reset. And there's been some acceleration points, obviously around digital and eCommerce. Some of our clients are really investing in that even while they're divesting other resources. Other companies are realizing, that there are weaknesses within their leadership team, or they have a key position that they still need to fill. So there are still, I would say it went from a flood of opportunities and people calling us every week to see if we could help them work on projects to a trickle. For candidates, I think that means you have to really know your strengths. You have to really know the job that you're best suited for, and you have to go beyond. You can't just look at postings and hope that you can apply and find a job. I think it's going to be really competitive. And I think you're really going to have to make sure that you're able to differentiate and communicate and realize that you're going to have to have a lot of activity to be in the right place at the right time because there's going to be such a competitive market. I feel really bad for a lot of the newly minted job seekers but at the same time. It's an opportunity for people to reinvent and rethink and maybe chart different directions. And I'm sure at the end of the day, even some of these companies that are failing right now, they might get recapitalized. I know there's a lot of private equity firms that might find these distress brands and bring them back to life. And so over time, I'm optimistic that everything will work out and that companies will actually be stronger as a result of this because retail, let's be honest, it was struggling already.vI'm trying to put a lot of resources on our website and blog and being as kind as I can, you know, and my team as well, to be responsive and supportive of job seekers. It's hard to keep up though, for sure. Who are some of the mentors that have helped you along the way, building this great team? I've had a lot, Adam Baker, I talked about who was the person who gave me my start. To this day when I call him, I thank him for giving me my start. But what I learned from him, he was a great manager and supervisor, and I haven't had a lot of managers and supervisors in my career. So I learned a lot from him, always supportive, kind of gave us a lot of freedom, even when we were very inexperienced, he trusted us and very metrics-driven, a lot of communication and follow-through, strategy and planning, follow-through, every month, every quarter, I learned that. Sue Schneider, who was his boss. She was also very involved in guiding the Nike apparel recruiting team and a super straight shooter, great at team building. After I left Nike, she sort of was a constant supporter. She's done tons of offsite strategy and planning meetings for the firm and probably a dozen team-building off-sites. And she never took any money. She always says just to pay me with a bottle of wine and a restaurant gift card. So I got to learn her favorite restaurants. She's fantastic. Steven Gomez, who was the brand president at Nike apparel when I was there, was sort of my boss's boss's boss. I wasn't obviously exposed too much to Steven at Nike, but after Nike, his mentorship really was around getting involved with the community. He's been involved with a lot of really great organizations and he's brought me in to do executive searches and we've also worked together on a few nonprofit boards. He's very process-oriented and he thinks through how to engage all the stakeholders. His leadership is just Epic. I would pretty much do anything for him. His values and his commitment to the community is just inspiring to have in your corner. One other person that I mentioned is Jack Ramsey, he's been a brand and marketing person. He worked for Regis McKenna, which is one of the most successful PR and marketing firms, then Apple and Intel, and companies like that in the early days. He really helped me bring the brand to life and define our differentiation early on with both firms and again, for little or no money. And his thing was acknowledging that people helped him along the way. His expectation of me is that I pay it forward. So I try to also support other entrepreneurs as well. How'd you get into podcasting, how'd you discover it or decide that you wanted to do it? It was born out of a need. So you know, it's called How I Hire, where I interview VP and C level executives to learn their best executive hiring advice and insights. So I started looking for that content in the podcast sphere. And what I found was there were some recruiters and search consultants sharing their own views and some interviewing other recruiters and talent acquisition professionals. But no one was interviewing the actual hiring executives on how they hire. And I saw a huge gap in information that existed out there. And so, you know, people don't want to hear what I have to say. They want to hear what my clients have to say. I love the format because I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people over the years and it's my fascination, learning, and interviewing. I found How I Hire dot com was available and I recruited a top-notch podcaster to help me get things off the ground. It's been about 10, 11 months and we've been doing about one episode a month and we're about to kick it up to two a month. I've been able to get some pretty inspiring leaders to be on the show and it's been really well received and I'm super excited about it. It's one of my favorite things to do. Where do you think that curiosity comes from? Hiring's not a perfect science, so I'm always looking for content and it's so broad and deep. There are so many different areas you can talk about, executive recruiting, selection, diversity, there's just a million topics. And so the curiosity just comes from a learning sort of mindset. The fact that I found that I'm always talking about with our clients and, even when we could go to parties, meet up with friends, I'm always fascinated by again what people do and, and whether or not they're good at it. In companies, there's a leader for marketing and an expert in finance and supply chain and operations and product creation people, and they're all masters at what they do, but everybody recruits and hires and not everyone is great at. Let's talk about any nonprofit work you do. I know you guys do a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, it really aligns with our mission as a B Corp and as a purpose-driven search firm, about 5% of our work is nonprofit. And we have some of that is pro bono. And some of it is at a discounted rate. We donate about 1% of revenue to nonprofits focused on equity and education and environmental conservation and outdoor education. So we work with and donate money to Nature Bridge and Open School and Big City Mountaineers, and Conservation Alliance, organizations like that. We also provide paid time off for volunteer work and match employee donations. We've done executive searches for American Alpine Club, Access Fund, Bicycle Transportation Alliance, OIA, Open School, and Period.org. Just to name a few off the top of my head. And then we also have donated space in our office building that we moved into last year. We have two of our desks are for nonprofits that we support. So, yeah. I try to make that central to our purpose so that 1% or more of revenue and we're trying to do more. I think the more success we have, the more we can do. What outdoor activities do you participate in, do you still out skiing? Not as much, I really have fallen off. My daughter's 12, almost 13, and she's become involved with the equestrian sport. So it's like a year-round thing. She's always training and competing as a Hunter jumper. And I love going to the barn and watching her train and compete. It takes away from our ability to go skiing and hiking on a lot of weekends because literally, it's both days and several times during the week. I'm learning a ton about the sport. It's fascinating. Do you have any suggestions or advice for folks wanting to get into the outdoor biz or grow their career if they're already in the industry? So I could focus on recent college grads or more experienced people, or do you have a preference? So to get into the outdoor industry, actually we have a ton of stuff on our blog and have information out there where people can check it out, but I'll give a good example too. Basically a lot of college grads come saying to me saying that they want to get their foot in the door, or I want to be in sports marketing. And, you know, when I ask if they want to work with athletes or in product marketing or in brand marketing, they're not really clear. They just think sports marketing is outdoor or athletic. So I think the first thing is you really need to do your homework and to understand what jobs are out there and where you might fit in and where the starting points are. and to get creative, you know, like if you just apply to Patagonia, there are 9,000 applicants, you know, for, I dunno how many internships, but a dozen at the most. So it's very hard to do that. And I'll give you an example of somebody who was successful, who I interacted with, from Michigan State. So I got a call. This was three years ago, from this guy named Oliver, Oliver Ambrose. He called me and he said, “I'm a student at Michigan State. I was looking at internships at Patagonia. I realized the recruiter there used to work for your firm, Alyssa Kessler. And so I started checking out your firm and I'm really interested in learning what you do. And wondering if you have any internship opportunities, I'll get myself to Portland for the summer. And these are some of the other things I'm doing”. And he started an outdoor blog, he did travel photography, he was a double major in philosophy and business and all this other stuff. He was obviously ambitious. And so I'm like, all right, well, well, let's talk some more. And we ended up hiring him and he came here for the summer. We got him a bike so he could commute. He was great. In fact, he worked for us for the entire rest of his senior year. Then he got an internship at Prana, probably because of some of the work that he did here. We even gave him a project around helping us become carbon neutral, like evaluating our footprint. And so he got an internship doing work on building a sustainability scoring system and then he got hired in product sourcing and sustainability. He made his way just by being really creative. I think that's a great example. And there are a few other programs that might be like the Portland State Athletic and Outdoor Industry certificate and Oregon State has a product management program. And I'm sure there are others. You are probably not going to get in the door doing the role of your dream job, but you'll get in the door doing something and then work your way into your dream job. If you could have a banner at the entrance to the OR show what would it say? I have two signs. One that says “hiring is a process, not an event”. And that is the more energy and effort and thoughtfulness you put into the process, the better the results you get. And on the other side of the banner, I'd say, “thank you for hiring my team. I love everybody in the industry and feel grateful.” How about favorite books or books you give us gifts? Well, lately I've been giving the book Made to Hire by Marin Huntley and that's about how to get the job you really want. And there are so many job seekers or people interested in making career moves. That's a book that I've been spending a lot of energy helping to promote cause I think it's really good. She has a background both on the corporate side and in marketing and she has also helped a lot of people. She has an online program as well as a book. Do you have a favorite outdoor gear purchase under a hundred dollars? Outdoor Research just came out with this essential face mask and it comes with a removable filter system and a special coating on the fabric that can provide some extra protection. I don't think they can make any claims that it's antiviral, but the construction, the ear loops, the shape, the way it's constructed looks really comfortable. Is there anything else you'd like to say or ask of our listeners? I'm so grateful for the outdoor industry and I feel honored to be on your podcast. I've really appreciated and enjoyed all of the friendships and relationships and professional support that I've gotten over the years. It's hard, you know, especially during these times, where we can't see each other. I really miss everybody and look forward to seeing things soon. Where can people find you if they want to reach out, email, Twitter, Instagram, go to the website? LinkedIn is great. You can follow us on LinkedIn. You can reach out to connect to me. You can InMail me. You can go to notogroup.com and subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which has updates on the jobs we're working on. And you can go to howIhire.com or wherever you listen to podcasts for How I Hire and subscribe. Other Links to what we talked about Noto Group Website    Noto Group Executive Search Services Noto Group Leadership Consulting Services Noto Group Job Board Noto Group LinkedIn Page How I Hire Podcast Website Certified B Corporations Made to Hire Outdoor Research Essential Face Mask Kit Link to Roy on LinkedIn   Please give us a rating and review HERE    

The http://www.heartlandconservationalliance.org/ checks in with us to bring us up to speed on all of their current endeavors. And on World Ocean Radio: “The Earth Has One Big Ocean With […] The post Heartland Conservation Alliance appeared first on KKFI.

Jeff Sermak is the National Sales Manager at Eagle Creek and on the Outreach Committee at the Conservation Alliance. He is doing great work at Eagle Creek and has a funny fish story for you.   Facebook Twitter Instagram   The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Support the show   Please give us a rating and review HERE   Show Notes Bio Grew up in So CA and spent time in the Eastern Sierra. College in Boulder, CO transferred to USC  to finish degree Lloyd wright Entrepreneurship program- Skateboard Co plastic skateboards “penny skateboards” Fraternity ATO alpha tau omega first exposure to the outdoors fishing with his Dad with a “snoopy rod”, caught his first rainbow trout Things we talked about catalyst for getting into outdoor biz: started out in Action Sports with street league skateboarding spent some time at Fuel TV finished degree and was hired in Marketing at Eagle Creek Currently National Sales Manager at Eagle Creek Outreach committee member and ambassador with The Conservation Alliance Daily Routine read for 30 min or so uses Outlook as calendar mgmt system runs daily Jeff's Reading List (in no particular order) Start with Why by Simon Sinek Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Getting to Yes by William Ury, and Bruce Patton The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Good to Great by Jim Collins The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer Tribes by Seth Godin Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki Connect with Jeff jeffrey.sermak@gmail.com Linkedin Links Lloyd Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Penny Skateboards The Conservation Alliance    

IAmy Roberts is OIA’s executive director. Amy was previously the director of sustainability and a member of the executive leadership team at Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) where she guided the Canadian outdoor retailer’s commitment to business and product sustainability and innovation. Amy also serves on the boards of The Conservation Alliance, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition.

တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြအတြက္ ေျမယာအခြင့္အေရးေတြဟာ တေန႔ထက္ တေန႔ ပိုပိုၿပီး အျငင္းပြားဖြယ္ ကိစၥ တစ္ခု အသြင္ ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္းက ေနရာေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားက ဖြံ႔ျဖိဳးမႈ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔ ပစ္မွတ္ထားခံလာရလို႔ပါ။ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ႏွစ္ေတြကတည္းက စၿပီး တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီးအတြင္း သစ္ေတာအသံုးျပဳမႈ အေပၚ ကန္႔သတ္မႈ နဲ႔ ေျမယာအသိမ္းခံရမႈေတြ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့အတြက္ အဲ့ဒီမွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ ေဒသခံေတြရဲ႕အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းေၾကာင္းအေပၚ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္မႈ အေနနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ႀကံဳေနရတာ ေၾကာင့္ ဌာေနတိုင္းရင္းသားေတြအတြက္ အခြင့္အေရးေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး ဒို႔အသံက ဒီတစ္ပတ္မွာ တင္ဆက္ေပးသြားမွာပါ။ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ အပတ္မွာေတာ့ Conservation Alliance of Tanawthari (CAT) ကေန ထုတ္ျပန္စာ တစ္ခု ထုတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီအထဲမွာေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံတကာအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြ အပါအ၀င္ အစိုးရဘက္ကသစ္ေတာထိန္းသိမ္းဖုိ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ေတြေၾကာင့္ ဒီေဒသ က တုိင္းရင္းသားေတြကို သူတုိ႔ေနထုိ္င္တဲ့ေနရာေတြနဲ႔ အဲဒီက သံယံဇာတဆီကေန ဖယ္ထုတ္ဖုိ႔ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနသလုိ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သတိေပးေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ Land rights for ethnic groups are becoming an increasingly controversial issue in Myanmar as more and more areas of the country are targeted for development. This week Doh Athan looks at the rights of indigenous peoples in Tanintharyi Region where land concessions and restrictions on forest use in recent years pose a grave threat to local livelihoods. In a report released last week, the Conservation Alliance of Tanawthari warned the government’s designation of “Protected Areas” for forest reserves and efforts by international conservation groups risked cutting off local residents from land and resources.

Welcome to episode 50. WOW five oh.  Feels like I launched The Outdoor Biz Podcast just the other day. This episode is with Steve Barker founder of Eagle Creek, recent leader of the Outdoor Industry Association and serial conservationist. Steve and I have been friends for a long time and we cover a lot in this wide ranging conversation from Eagle Creek, his non-profit work and much more. Facebook Twitter   Instagram The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Please give us a rating and review HERE   Show Notes This episode is with Steve Barker founder of Eagle Creek, recent leader of the Outdoor Industry Association and serial conservationist. Steve and I have been friends for a long time and we cover a lot in this wide ranging conversation from Eagle Creek, his non-profit work and much more. First Exposure to the Outdoors I grew up in Oyster Bay New York as a kid of the generation where my parents every morning told me not to come back until dinner. I grew up in a little town and started exploring things in my backyard. My mom was real sick when I young so spent a lot of time in the hospital so I had a lot of time on my own and found the outdoors as place that I could go and just spend endless hours turning over rocks, going fishing, hiking different paths. You know it's interesting I talk about being from New York area people think you're from the city but Oyster Bay was actually pretty rural. We had lots of trails and hiking and eventually I scored a job when I was 11 or 12 mowing the lawn at Sagamore Hill which was Teddy Roosevelt's family home. Boy that was certainly inspiring, I got to go in the house and it was like a museum of exploration, certainly was very inspiring. Things we talked about Fredericks Skiing and Hiking Outward Bound Oregon State University Idyllwild Mountain People Nona Barker 2/10 net 30 Larry Harrison John Fagan Solana Beach Ricky Schlesinger Elfin Forest Escondido Creek Conservancy Conservation Alliance Outdoor Industry Association (ORCA) Sally McCoy Alaska Wilderness League Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Skip Yowell Future Leadership Academy Adventure Travel Trade Association Adventure Travel Conservation Fund Eastern Sierra Avalanche Roots Rated Advice, tips I was involved early with the Future Leaders Academy and and that was certainly one place where the industry said hey we're we're seeing a lot of the boomers are aging out of the industry we've got a lot of young people that are excited about getting in. Since companies are now more medium to large size companies we have siloed up our organizations and we have the what my daughter calls cubicle refugees out working for us that may not be looking at the broader picture because they end up in a marketing silo or a product silo sourcing silo and don't really see what's going on in sales or branding. So it's much harder to get a general education and even harder to figure out what kind of institutions to get involved in outside of work that could support your career. That was the genesis behind the Future Leaders Academy. So I guess it starts out with suggesting that people that are interested invest in yourself. I don't see where companies are spending near enough time developing employees, they're having a hard enough time just competing. So you've got to take that on yourself and have an equity mindset as far as what are you getting out of your job that will give you a long-term payback. What are you learning, are you actually getting equity. I think you can look at it as real equity. If you're not getting anything good, if you're not learning at your job find out where to learn it yourself. There's plenty of resources out there now. Start with an annual planning and goal setting process and figure out where you want to be in a couple years. Be honest about your self-assessment and say here's the things that I need to learn. Ideally that can be done with your supervisor or your boss but it's really on you to develop that plan. Then go get that knowledge, go get that experience. If you can't get it in your work go get it by volunteering. I have learned probably as much, maybe more volunteering with nonprofits, it's really broadened my experience and my knowledge from volunteer fire department to working in local conservation or working with groups that are getting kids outdoors. You have a lot to help them with, you'll always get more back volunteering than you give. So that's a suggestion look at the nonprofit area as a career as well, there's a lot of real and opportunity there, maybe more entrepreneurial opportunity in non-profit than there is in the profit community. If you're interested in product, though I think we probably have enough product, looking at how to add value in the supply chain or figure out how to continue the life of a product or a material. Reuse it, recycle it is a key area that if you're interested in a career in product well then make some product, learn something about the supply chain. Simply being able to draw something pretty in Illustrator, I don't think that brings anything new to the table these days and as I said, we've probably got enough product. So figure out how to either how to make a product and/or understand the supply chain. I also would say find mentors. Once you figure out here's where I want to be figure out who has the knowledge and can help you. It takes a little hutzpah but reach out to those people and ask them if they will talk to you, have a conversation over coffee and find your own mentors don't wait for them to find you. Then take some risks and fail. I think I talked early on about having a huge failure which I thought my life was ending when we failed at mountain people. It was extremely sad but I learned so much from that, Eagle Creek never would have happened if I hadn't failed at mountain people. So really embrace your failures. Then look around the industry be it the OIA, Conservation Alliance, Adventure Travel Conservation Fund, Camber, Sustainable Working Group, Adventure Travel Trade Association, every single one of those organizations has an opportunity for you to learn. Volunteer, get involved and meet your future mentors and understand more about the industry, the area of public land and sustainability. There's just so much more resource today for somebody in the industry than there was when we started and it's shame on you if you're waiting for somebody to come to you. We've laid it out, we've developed all these institutions for you. Everybody in my age group wants our industry to survive and thrive and we know that it's going to take switched-on young people to see this legacy continue so there's a lot of people waiting for you to show up. Favorite Books Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner Endurance by Alfred Lansing Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer White Spider by Heinrich Harrer Carl Hiaasen A Night on the Ground a Day in the Open by Doug Robinson Best Gear Purchase under $100 Tenkara Rod Big Agnes sleeping pad Pack-It Specter™ Cubes Forge Coffee Cup Apps, Tools, Podcasts pulse point  iPhone  iPad weatherlink   iPhone roots rated   iPhone  iPad duolingo   iPhone  iPad google translate   iPhone  iPad seat guru   iPhone TripAdvisor   iPhone  iPad Eastern Sierra Avalanche Roots Rated Connect with  Facebook sbarker@oldcreekers.com

This special edition for the Fall pledge drive features three segments: Spencer Graves joins us to talk about net neutrality from Washington DC. Second, a replay of an interview that […] The post Net Neutrality, Ghandi’s Gift, and Heartland Conservation Alliance appeared first on KKFI.

Conservation Alliance Executive Director John Sterling tells about how he got his start in the outdoors, the great work done at the Conservation Alliance and how you can help support our public lands. Facebook Twitter   Instagram Website   Please give us a rating and review HERE  

This episode is my conversation with Serena Bishop Gordon. Serena is a Professional Cyclist and Program Director for The Conservation Alliance.    We talk about her finance education, her brief time working with Enron and how she got involved with Adidas and The Conservation Alliance. Facebook Twitter Instagram Website Please rate and review HERE

Jeff Sermak is the National Sales Manager at Eagle Creek and on the Outreach Committee at the Conservation Alliance. He is doing great work at Eagle Creek and has a funny fish story for you. Facebook Twitter Instagram Website Please rate and review HERE

PNN - The Particular is the Universal This week's show is about the very particular Ecological Issues which while they pertain to a particular region of Florida is equally quite UNIVERSAL what happens to any unique habitat, happens to us all. When you act to protect the snaildarter or the spotted owl, you are also simultaneously protecting your son, daughter, grand niece, grandson, and great uncle twice removed, as well as the cat lady on the Simpsons. Our Senior Political Commentator. Brook Hines,  will keep us informed on the latest news on State and Nation Democratic Progressive issues and share her perspectives. And we will hear comments from life long ecology activist Maggie Hurchalla, on the importance and necessity of COMPREHENSIVE LAND PLANNING. We will hear an announcement by Indian River Keeper Mr. Marty Baum native Floridian, from a long line of Floridians talking about a  pending Acoustic FISH STUDY coming up in the Indian River Estuary waters. (HINT: They are looking for fUnding and VOLUNTEERS) We will also listen in on an update given during a recent Rivers Coalition meeting on the Senate Bill S10 as amended the good the BAD and the WORSE We are also joined by the President of the Conservation Alliance of St. Lucie County Ms. Shari R. Anker MSW  who discusses with us, the unprecedented attack, on the Halpatiokee Regional Park and its amazing diverse native life.Despite the rush toward destruction and development by the government of St. Lucie County steps can still be undertaken to protect this unique habitat.  TUNE IN Sundays Live 7pm  or anytime http://www.NewMercuryMedia.com

In 2016, we conducted an extensive series of interviews and surveys to find out how OIA—the outdoor industry’s membership trade association—can best support outdoor companies. What we learned is that our members see us as a convener—the unifying entity best equipped to galvanize the industry around three important issues: policy, participation and sustainable business. We then identified individuals who are already working to move the needle on those issues within their respective companies.   Today you’ll hear from three of those individuals -  They’ve watched the industry grow and mature, and they’re fiercely committed to protecting it. They’ve joined the voices of their organizations: OIA, Outdoor Alliance and Conservation Alliance to advocate for public lands. The only thing that rivals their love of the outdoors is their love for public policy. They are Alex Boian, Adam Cramer and John Sterling, and they demonstrate that through collaboration, our industry as a whole can do more so much more than a single company or individual can do alone. That is the concept behind our new campaign and our strategic vision: Together We Are A Force.   Want to learn more about these individuals and the work OIA is doing to foster collaboration throughout the industry and to catalyze change? Visit outdoorindustry.org/outdoorist to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and our Audio Outdoorist podcast.  

This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Tim Fitzgerald, director of the Impact Division of Environmental Defense Fund’s Fishery Solutions Center – leading its global programs on training, seafood markets, supply chain engagement and fisheries finance. Tim also serves on the boards of Ecofish LLC and GulfWild, and is an advisor to Fair Trade USA, the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions.

This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Tim Fitzgerald, director of the Impact Division of Environmental Defense Fund’s Fishery Solutions Center – leading its global programs on training, seafood markets, supply chain engagement and fisheries finance. Tim also serves on the boards of Ecofish LLC and GulfWild, and is an advisor to Fair Trade USA, the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions.

“Maybe it’s a little stormy out, but we’re gonna keep going.” - Brady Robinson Brady Robinson started off working for North Carolina Outward Bound from 1995 to 2007. He held a variety of positions over the years, from instructor to director of operations. Brady started and ran the Patagonia mountaineering program from 1999 to 2003. "During my final 4 years I oversaw all program operations and safety management for the school," says Robinson. "I remain engaged with the outdoor education world through my work with the Access Fund."    Brady has served as the executive director of the Access Fund since the fall of 2007. The Access Fund is the national advocacy organization that keeps U.S. climbing areas open and conserves the climbing environment. Being founded in 1991, they’ve just recently celebrated their 25th anniversary.They are a certified land trust with a revolving loan program and support over 100 climbing agencies across the country. Brady also serves on the Board of Directors of the Outdoor Alliance, whose mission is to ensure the conservation and stewardship of our nation’s land and waters through the promotion of sustainable, human-powered recreation. Bulletpoints A lot of success with the Obama administration in regards to the Access Fund program Government wishes to get recreational land to be a state owned territory instead of federally owned When states compete with who can better support these sustainable activities, it’s good for everybody We’ve been tugging at the pant legs of decision makers, trying to bring the importance of recreational areas to their attention With the new administration in 2017, there is cause for concern The Outdoor Alliance and Conservation Alliance had a program laid out with the Clinton Administration, which fell through due to election results It is written in Republican federal documentation that they are going to sell off federal lands to states It’s not about states rights, it’s about who is the highest bidder - It raises cause for concern Corporations will see this as an opportunity to grab public land Global warming is a real issue, and affects the climbing community It’s important to support the organizations you believe in! Act when the time comes Links Brady Robinson’s Twitter: twitter.com/bradyrobinson Access Fund: Accessfund.org Outdoor Alliance: OutdoorAlliance.org Conservation Alliance: ConservationAlliance.com  

“Our wilderness areas and our national parks we all know as the places where we have those iconic outdoor recreation experiences.” - John Sterling   John Sterling, the executive director of The Conservation Alliance, joins us to discuss the dangers our federally managed lands face today. John Sterling served as a board member of the Conservation Alliance, at Patagonia in the late 90’s for 7 years. From there, he left to find a way to fund a full time staff position at the Conservation Alliance, which eventually came together in 2005 due to a partnership with Keen Footwear. John helped put together a process for laying out an economic rationale for preserving public alliance in wild places, which got business leaders to go out to Washington D.C and lobby for wilderness bills.   Bulletpoints   There are members of Congress on the Republican side that don't believe in climate change and are openly hostile to conservation The study that OIA (Outdoor Industry Association is now the foundation of the conversation about the value of lands–the value of outdoor recreation for our economy One of the biggest concerns is that you do have members of Congress whose ideas are very well thought out in total contradiction to our values and what we want to accomplish on public lands We need to ensure that members of Congress that do want to give away federal lands to the states or back out of climate change deals, don't have their way Many people take our public lands for granted The federal government manages on our behalf, millions of acres of land under the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), the foresters, the park service, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service It's an official plank in 2016 Republican party platform to transfer federal lands to the states There is value in having all of our federal lands managed by one entity - That's how you can ensure that there's consistency in management States cannot run budget deficits - If there is a forest fire in Oregon, and they have to fund putting that fire out, it would bankrupt the state almost overnight Polling usually shows somewhere in the mid 70s for: "Yes, we need to preserve this public land system" We are at a political moment where if you care about your public lands, you have to get engaged in the effort to ensure that that system stays intact   Links   The Conservation Alliance:ConservationAlliance.com Outdoor Alliance Protectourpublicland.org Bureau of Land Management: BLM.gov Outdoor Industry Association: OutdoorIndustry.com  

A conversation with Aron Ralston In 2003 Aron Ralston was brash young man looking for adventure. But while exploring the slot canyons of the Utah desert he found himself trapped miles from home deep within a underground chasm his right arm crushed and pinned by a massive boulder. There he lay stranded with no hope of rescue for five days. Rolston's story was portrayed in the 2010 film 127 Hours starting James Franko. In order to escape from circumstance that would have meant certain death Ralston was forced to amputate his own arm. But he would go one to inspire millions through his incredible story of survival and perseverance through his bestselling book Between a Rock & a Hard Place. Ralstonwas the keynote speaker at the bi-annual meeting of the Conservation Alliance during 2012 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City Utah. Immediately following his presentation I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his ordeal and what inspired him to live to tell his story. JTP: Many people have seen the film and have read the book. The film is called 127 Hours. And the book is called Between a Rock and a Hard Place and it tells your story of a very harrowing experience in the Utah desert. I'll leave it to other people to get an idea as to what it is that, that story meant to them, but perhaps you can give me an idea. In the film, how accurate was James Franko's portrayal of your story? What did they get right? What did they get wrong? Ralston: Well I worked with the film team for seven years as it was to take it all the way from when I wrote my book to turn it into a script and then selecting a director and working with them to choose James as they did to depict me and my experience. And even working with James then to coach him through the actions. He's admittedly not an outdoorsman and to get him familiar with the desert, to get him an understanding of my experience. Not that he was trying to impersonate me so much, but to take an audience through my entrapment, the psychological aspects of the ordeal that I endured and then the liberation, the release, the triumph of it all too. And I thought it was very accurately portrayed, both from the overarching emotional stories, the themes that they highlighted about love and family and also the very physical and factual aspects of it too, all wrapped up in this extraordinary film adaptation of my experience. I think that people who watch it they know what I went through. You feel it really as you watch the film. So I was extremely pleased with what they did. I was that the point where I'm watching it with my sister a couple of times and as she's seeing it for the first time she's like elbowing me and slapping me on the knee saying , "That's so you! They totally nailed it!" Even with my family they saw how genuine it was and to do that and at the same time really make a film that moves people? That's not an easy thing. You usually have to choose one or the other, but they got it both. They got this amazing film, I thought very powerful and inspiring and then also sometimes resonated with my experience that showed that genuine portrayal. Even with my faults, somethings I'm not necessarily proud of, mistakes and foibles as they are. I couldn't have been happier. JTP: Your experience was both physically and emotionally traumatic. Can you give me an idea, can your subscribe for me what was the greatest moment of despair for you? Ralston: I think that the darkest point of the entrapment came after I had eliminated all my options of escape and was really left with still the idea that I could amputate my arm. It's just that I wasn't desperate enough yet and then as I became more desperate on the third day I tried to cut into my arm. I couldn't even cut through the skin. I felt despair and thought I'd bottomed out at that point. But then later on the fourth day I had this kind of epiphany of sorts, that I could take the knife and hold it like a dagger and try to stab m...

A conversation with Aron Ralston In 2003 Aron Ralston was brash young man looking for adventure. But while exploring the slot canyons of the Utah desert he found himself trapped miles from home deep within a underground chasm his right arm crushed and pinned by a massive boulder. There he lay stranded with no hope of rescue for five days. Rolston's story was portrayed in the 2010 film 127 Hours starting James Franko. In order to escape from circumstance that would have meant certain death Ralston was forced to amputate his own arm. But he would go one to inspire millions through his incredible story of survival and perseverance through his bestselling book Between a Rock & a Hard Place. Ralstonwas the keynote speaker at the bi-annual meeting of the Conservation Alliance during 2012 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City Utah. Immediately following his presentation I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his ordeal and what inspired him to live to tell his story. JTP: Many people have seen the film and have read the book. The film is called 127 Hours. And the book is called Between a Rock and a Hard Place and it tells your story of a very harrowing experience in the Utah desert. I'll leave it to other people to get an idea as to what it is that, that story meant to them, but perhaps you can give me an idea. In the film, how accurate was James Franko's portrayal of your story? What did they get right? What did they get wrong? Ralston: Well I worked with the film team for seven years as it was to take it all the way from when I wrote my book to turn it into a script and then selecting a director and working with them to choose James as they did to depict me and my experience. And even working with James then to coach him through the actions. He's admittedly not an outdoorsman and to get him familiar with the desert, to get him an understanding of my experience. Not that he was trying to impersonate me so much, but to take an audience through my entrapment, the psychological aspects of the ordeal that I endured and then the liberation, the release, the triumph of it all too. And I thought it was very accurately portrayed, both from the overarching emotional stories, the themes that they highlighted about love and family and also the very physical and factual aspects of it too, all wrapped up in this extraordinary film adaptation of my experience. I think that people who watch it they know what I went through. You feel it really as you watch the film. So I was extremely pleased with what they did. I was that the point where I'm watching it with my sister a couple of times and as she's seeing it for the first time she's like elbowing me and slapping me on the knee saying , "That's so you! They totally nailed it!" Even with my family they saw how genuine it was and to do that and at the same time really make a film that moves people? That's not an easy thing. You usually have to choose one or the other, but they got it both. They got this amazing film, I thought very powerful and inspiring and then also sometimes resonated with my experience that showed that genuine portrayal. Even with my faults, somethings I'm not necessarily proud of, mistakes and foibles as they are. I couldn't have been happier. JTP: Your experience was both physically and emotionally traumatic. Can you give me an idea, can your subscribe for me what was the greatest moment of despair for you? Ralston: I think that the darkest point of the entrapment came after I had eliminated all my options of escape and was really left with still the idea that I could amputate my arm. It's just that I wasn't desperate enough yet and then as I became more desperate on the third day I tried to cut into my arm. I couldn't even cut through the skin. I felt despair and thought I'd bottomed out at that point. But then later on the fourth day I had this kind of epiphany of sorts, that I could take the knife and hold it like a dagger and try to stab m...

For most of his life wildlife photographer Florian Schulz has fought to protect the diversity of animals species around the world. Working in the most remote region of the planet he's tracked and documented the wild birds of Mexico, big game animals of the African continent as well as the migratory patterns of caribou in the Alaskan Arctic. And it's in this frozen region known for its vast featureless landscapes where Florian has followed and photographed the great Polar Bears of the northern hemisphere. Florian: It's really a land of extremes both in temperatures but also in the survival of animals in these harsh environments. And for me that is so intriguing, how the natural world is able cope and adapt to such extreme places. And I found it anything else but a barren wasteland. With patient study after long months in the field Florian has come to a profound understanding of nature's most delicate balance. By observing large animals musk ox, wolves, moose and grizzly bears he hopes to make those who see his photographs realize that all of these species have a direct relationship with each other, the land and in no small way the survival of humanity. At the bi-annual breakfast meeting of the Conservation Alliance at the 2012 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Salt Lake City Utah Florian Schulz was the keynote speaker. Shortly after his presentation he shared with me how he first came to forge an intimate relationship with the harsh and forbidding environment of the Alaskan Arctic. Florian: I realized once I gave the land some time, once almost I got invited in I was starting to be able to see and document things that I would have never dreamt of seeing. But I have to be honest that you won't go there and immediately just see everything. I mean it's definitely important that you do spend the time and you don't too big expectations because it's a vast open place and wildlife sometimes is very dispersed. JTP: I think that's actually one of the most compelling things about your work in that not unlike ice it takes a long time to develop. You have to slow it down. I'm interested in finding out how it is that you were able to slow yourself down enough to get a full appreciation for the minute changes that you wouldn't necessarily see instantly just by being there. How did you find yourself even able to work in the solitude of that area? Florian: I think as a photographer you have it a little bit easier because if you are dreaming of exceptional images that kind of really occupies you. So if it's a question of how do you get the patience? How do you go to a remote location year after year even though you haven't been successful in finding the caribou for example? It is because you are envisioning these most spectacular images and that gives you so much excitement that you're willing to go through the millions of mosquitoes, the freezing temperatures where you're just really suffering. But that fascination with the images kind of let's you endure all of that. But I don't care enough about the suffering like that because you get rewarded with the view of an iceberg underneath the water or, you know, a view of thick bill murres diving as if they were penguins going down into the depths of the ocean. So yeah it's rewarding. That's why you can endure it. JTP: The work that you're doing helped to establish a program called Freedom to Roam and the primary premise as I understand it is to create wildlife corridors through which animal species can successfully migrate for mating, for the gathering of food. How is it that you came to understand the necessity for the establishment and maintenance of wildlife corridors? Florian: If you think about Europe and how chopped up for example the last natural areas there are you very quickly realize that any large predators life wolves, grizzly bears or even things like lynx they get dramatically reduced. They go extinct and so on if these natural areas become small and smaller.

For most of his life wildlife photographer Florian Schulz has fought to protect the diversity of animals species around the world. Working in the most remote region of the planet he's tracked and documented the wild birds of Mexico, big game animals of the African continent as well as the migratory patterns of caribou in the Alaskan Arctic. And it's in this frozen region known for its vast featureless landscapes where Florian has followed and photographed the great Polar Bears of the northern hemisphere. Florian: It's really a land of extremes both in temperatures but also in the survival of animals in these harsh environments. And for me that is so intriguing, how the natural world is able cope and adapt to such extreme places. And I found it anything else but a barren wasteland. With patient study after long months in the field Florian has come to a profound understanding of nature's most delicate balance. By observing large animals musk ox, wolves, moose and grizzly bears he hopes to make those who see his photographs realize that all of these species have a direct relationship with each other, the land and in no small way the survival of humanity. At the bi-annual breakfast meeting of the Conservation Alliance at the 2012 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Salt Lake City Utah Florian Schulz was the keynote speaker. Shortly after his presentation he shared with me how he first came to forge an intimate relationship with the harsh and forbidding environment of the Alaskan Arctic. Florian: I realized once I gave the land some time, once almost I got invited in I was starting to be able to see and document things that I would have never dreamt of seeing. But I have to be honest that you won't go there and immediately just see everything. I mean it's definitely important that you do spend the time and you don't too big expectations because it's a vast open place and wildlife sometimes is very dispersed. JTP: I think that's actually one of the most compelling things about your work in that not unlike ice it takes a long time to develop. You have to slow it down. I'm interested in finding out how it is that you were able to slow yourself down enough to get a full appreciation for the minute changes that you wouldn't necessarily see instantly just by being there. How did you find yourself even able to work in the solitude of that area? Florian: I think as a photographer you have it a little bit easier because if you are dreaming of exceptional images that kind of really occupies you. So if it's a question of how do you get the patience? How do you go to a remote location year after year even though you haven't been successful in finding the caribou for example? It is because you are envisioning these most spectacular images and that gives you so much excitement that you're willing to go through the millions of mosquitoes, the freezing temperatures where you're just really suffering. But that fascination with the images kind of let's you endure all of that. But I don't care enough about the suffering like that because you get rewarded with the view of an iceberg underneath the water or, you know, a view of thick bill murres diving as if they were penguins going down into the depths of the ocean. So yeah it's rewarding. That's why you can endure it. JTP: The work that you're doing helped to establish a program called Freedom to Roam and the primary premise as I understand it is to create wildlife corridors through which animal species can successfully migrate for mating, for the gathering of food. How is it that you came to understand the necessity for the establishment and maintenance of wildlife corridors? Florian: If you think about Europe and how chopped up for example the last natural areas there are you very quickly realize that any large predators life wolves, grizzly bears or even things like lynx they get dramatically reduced. They go extinct and so on if these natural areas become small and smaller.

For those of us who spend a great deal of time outdoors it's hard to believe that there are many of those who don't. Especially when it comes to our national parks there is an entire segment of the United States population, natural born citizens who seldom if ever visit. This is particularly true among people of color. African-Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities spend far less time in nature than their white counterparts. And in a shifting demographic where minorities will soon become the majority there's rising concern throughout the conservation movement that one day in the not so distant future most U.S. citizens will have no personal relationship with or affinity for the natural world. This concern is expressed most eloquently by National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson. The only permanent African-American ranger at Yosemite National Park his mission is to share with audiences, black and white, lessons of stewardship that illustrate the bond with nature that is every U.S. citizen's birth rite. An interpretive ranger that tells the story of the Buffalo Soldiers, African-American cavalrymen who projected Yosemite at the turn of last century, Johnson puts into context the importance of wilderness not merely as a point of national pride but an intrinsic value of what it mean to be human. At the biannual meeting of the Conservation Alliance at the 2011 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City Utah, Shelton Johnson was the keynote speaker. Best known for his prominent role in the Ken Burns documentary "The National Parks, America's Best Idea," he was also instrumental in bringing Yosemite Valley to the attention of leading black talk show host Oprah Winfrey. In a nationally televised visit to the park in 2010 Winfrey used her media clout to invite millions of minorities across the country to explore the great outdoors. In this unabridged audio recording Johnson is welcomed to the podium by Conservation Alliance executive director John Sterling. For 40 minutes Ranger Johnson inspired a rapt crowd with a message to encourage all people, regardless of race, to embrace the wonders of nature and to claim their inheritance of our national treasures  Music this week by the band Hot Buttered Rum The Joy Trip Project is brought with the support of our sponsor Patagonia.   Coverage of the 2011 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market was supported by Knupp, Watson & Wallman

For those of us who spend a great deal of time outdoors it's hard to believe that there are many of those who don't. Especially when it comes to our national parks there is an entire segment of the United States population, natural born citizens who seldom if ever visit. This is particularly true among people of color. African-Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities spend far less time in nature than their white counterparts. And in a shifting demographic where minorities will soon become the majority there's rising concern throughout the conservation movement that one day in the not so distant future most U.S. citizens will have no personal relationship with or affinity for the natural world. This concern is expressed most eloquently by National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson. The only permanent African-American ranger at Yosemite National Park his mission is to share with audiences, black and white, lessons of stewardship that illustrate the bond with nature that is every U.S. citizen's birth rite. An interpretive ranger that tells the story of the Buffalo Soldiers, African-American cavalrymen who projected Yosemite at the turn of last century, Johnson puts into context the importance of wilderness not merely as a point of national pride but an intrinsic value of what it mean to be human. At the biannual meeting of the Conservation Alliance at the 2011 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City Utah, Shelton Johnson was the keynote speaker. Best known for his prominent role in the Ken Burns documentary "The National Parks, America's Best Idea," he was also instrumental in bringing Yosemite Valley to the attention of leading black talk show host Oprah Winfrey. In a nationally televised visit to the park in 2010 Winfrey used her media clout to invite millions of minorities across the country to explore the great outdoors. In this unabridged audio recording Johnson is welcomed to the podium by Conservation Alliance executive director John Sterling. For 40 minutes Ranger Johnson inspired a rapt crowd with a message to encourage all people, regardless of race, to embrace the wonders of nature and to claim their inheritance of our national treasures  Music this week by the band Hot Buttered Rum The Joy Trip Project is brought with the support of our sponsor Patagonia.   Coverage of the 2011 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market was supported by Knupp, Watson & Wallman