Samaria Jaffe

President
San Rafael, California

Samaria Jaffe is the Conservation Fund’s Regional Director of Fundraising for the Pacific Coast, Alaska and Hawaii. She has served as the executive director at the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. Before joining PRNSA, she was at The Trust for Public Land, developing conservation and fundraising programs for communities across northern California, primarily in the Sierra Nevada. She played a lead role in some of the Sierra Nevada’s most visible open space campaigns in recent years, Martis Valley and Royal Gorge at Donner Summit. She is inspired by community-driven conservation and stewardship. Samaria is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, and spent much of her youth exploring the trails and beaches of Point Reyes.

Estee Rivera Murdock

Vice President
Estes Park, CO

Estee Rivera Murdock, is the executive director at the Rocky Mountain Conservancy, which produces educational publications, offers seminars, supports research, and provides philanthropic support to Rocky Mountain National Park and other public lands partners in Colorado and Wyoming. Born and raised in southern Arizona, Estee previously worked for the National Park Service for nearly a decade. She has an MA in geography with a focus on Hispanic community engagement and public lands and geographic information science. She also holds a B.A. in anthropology and Spanish literature, all from the University of Arizona. She currently resides with her husband and daughter in Estes Park, CO.

Peter Schoenburg

Treasurer
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Peter has spent his entire career as a trial lawyer defending people accused of crimes in federal and state court. His broad array of cases as a state and federal public defender and in private practice with the firm of Rothstein Donatelli LLP introduced him to the rich history of the West including capital murder cases involving family feuds going back generations, tensions between recent arrivals and long-standing communities, political corruption, protests by Water Protectors at Standing Rock, and conflicts between traditional Native American religious practices and federal laws outlawing the possession of eagle feathers and peyote. For 10 years he coauthored a column on the defense of drug cases in the magazine of the National Assoc of Defense Lawyers.  He is a veteran trial advocacy teacher and taught at the Univ. of New Mexico Law School for 15 years as an Adjunct Professor. Peter irrigates a small orchard and vineyard using an acequia dating back to the 1700s in Albuquerque, along with tending 3 hives of very intelligent bees. He is a graduate of Yale College and Rutgers School of Law.

Fátima Luna

Secretary
Tucson, Arizona

Fátima Luna serves as the Climate and Sustainability Policy Advisor for City of Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, leading and managing the development and implementation of the city’s climate action plan. Luna’s experience includes serving as the environmental and natural resource economist for the Sonoran Institute in the Water and Ecosystem Restoration (formerly known as the Colorado River Delta Program). Most recently, she led an initiative to establish a small-scale conservation fund that collaborates with water users to create a network of community-led or community-owned small-scale restoration projects in the Colorado River Delta. Fátima is a mother of three and an advocate for racial and environmental justice. In her free time, she enjoys weightlifting, gardening and hiking.

Bryan Pollard

San Francisco, California

Bryan is an Oklahoma native and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He grew up in New Orleans and after graduation from Louisiana State University, he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he began his journalism career and fell in love with the West. He was the founding managing editor of Street Roots, a nonprofit newspaper covering issues of concern to the homeless and low-income citizens of Portland. He later returned to Oklahoma to serve as the executive editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, Indian Country’s first Native American newspaper first published in 1828. Bryan is also the associate director and former president of the Native American Journalists Association, where his work lies in developing programs that empower Indigenous voices in journalism, and that examine and explain the intersection of journalistic freedom and Indigenous rights.

Raynelle Rino

Oakland, California

A longtime environmental education professional, Raynelle began her career in the sciences as an ecology field researcher then moved onto environmental education and social justice at the grassroots organizational level. Her love for nature and youth development brought her to teach in unique settings like alternative high schools, environmental justice neighborhoods, parks, and juvenile justice facilities. In 2016 Raynelle started Rino Consulting Solutions, a nature-based consulting firm that provides coaching services for professionals and build bridges between mainstream environmentalism and people of color. Its mission is “to support and inspire the leaders of today to live in the confidence of their identities as they move through a world in the midst of social, racial, and environmental transformation.” Raynelle is a graduate of Humboldt State University with a B.S. in Biology, a Rising Leaders and 2042 Today fellow, and lives in Oakland with her husband and daughter.

Jim Spencer

Portland, Oregon

Jim Spencer is semi-retired and is the Principal of JM Spencer Associates, a consultancy that mentors and invests in early-stage businesses, emphasizing woman and BIPOC owned firms; and businesses that provide a social or environmental impact. Spencer Associates also provides consulting services to the alcoholic beverage industry. Mr. Spencer spent 20 years in the consulting, consulting engineering and construction/project management industries, where he led the expansion of CH2M Hills microelectronics practice in China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and Korea. Jim currently serves as a Trustee for Lewis and Clark College in Portland OR, and on the Board of Directors for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, MT. Jim is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College, and he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. His passions include hiking, fly fishing, camping, cooking, and a growing interest in sustainable local food communities.

Rich Stolz

Annandale, Virginia

Rich Stolz has been a longtime community organizer with a deep background in immigration, environmental justice and economic justice organizing and advocacy at the national, state and local level. He recently served as the executive director of OneAmerica, a statewide racial justice community organizing group in Washington state. He lives near Seattle, Washington, where he continues to engage in advocacy, organizing and strategy development with community-based organizations.

Andy Wiessner

Snowmass, Colorado

Andy Wiessner, has been on the board of High Country News since 1986, and is the organization’s longest-serving board member. Andy is a public land consultant with Western Land Group, which specializes in federal land exchanges and land use issues. He served a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1969-70, and worked as staff assistant and counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittees on Mines and Mining (1975-1976) and the Subcommittee on Public Lands in Washington, D.C. (1977-1985). Andy serves on the board of the Wilderness Workshop based in Carbondale, CO, and the Wilderness Land Trust, a nonprofit specializing in the acquisition of wilderness inholdings. Other past board service has included organizations such as: Eagle Valley Land Trust, American Wilderness Alliance, Clear Creek Land Conservancy and Eagle County Citizens for Open Space.

Luis Torres

Emeritus
Santa Cruz, New Mexico

Luis Torres, board member emeritus, has had a 50-year career doing social change/community organizing work. A native of northern New Mexico, Luis launched his career in 1970 when he took his first in a series of job with a Community Action Agency, a War on Poverty Program. In 1974, he opened the first ever American Friends Service Committee in New Mexico. He directed that program for 10 years. In 1984, he went to work for the Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) as their northern New Mexico director. In 1992 he left SRIC and since then has continued his life-long involvement in social change work  mostly as a volunteer and occasionally being paid for consulting.

Special Advisors

Dina Gilio-Whitaker

San Clemente, California

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues. She teaches courses on environmentalism and American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion and philosophy, Native women’s activism, American Indians and sports, and decolonization. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. She is also an award-winning journalist and the author of two books, including As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock.

Andrea Otáñez

Seattle, Washington

Andrea Otáñez is an educator and journalist who has written, edited and developed online and print packages in a variety of journalistic beats, including environment, science, politics, medicine, communities, religion and consumer affairs. She is currently an associate teaching professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she has developed courses in race, gender and equity, focusing specifically on critiquing the rituals of journalistic objectivity and on the representation of Latinx people in media. Otáñez has worked as a reporter, copy editor, team editor and columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune and The Seattle Times. She also worked as an acquisitions editor and editor-at-large for the University of New Mexico Press. At root, she’s a high-desert devotee.