STAFF, CONSULTANTS & BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Deborah Moskowitz, MPH, PresidentDeborah L. Moskowitz serves as President of RRI. Ms. Moskowitz grew up in California, studied Health Sciences at UC Santa Barbara and earned a Masters degree in Public Health from San Diego State University. She has formerly managed community health clinics in Santa Barbara and Oklahoma, and worked for 15 years as an analyst and project director for a private firm specializing in the design and implementation of software systems for California County Public Health Departments. Deborah was awarded the inaugural "Champion of Promise" award in Food Sustainability from the Silicon Valley non-profit, Acterra, for her development of RRI's Fish in the Fields program. Deborah lives in Marin, has three daughters and is an active hiker, kayaker and mountain biker.
Chance A. Cutrano, MPA, Director of Programs
Barbara Deutsch, Communications Consultant
Barbara brings her experience in advertising and branding to RRI and helps us get our message across with program naming, media materials, articles, and reports. She has developed communications for many RRI programs, including Green Plans, Fish in the Fields, and Forces of Nature. Over the last few years, Barbara had the privilege of collaborating with Huey Johnson on his memoir, Something of the Marvelous: Lessons Learned from Nature and My Sixty Years as an Environmentalist, published shortly after he passed away in 2020. Barbara is a founding board member and volunteer for San Francisco’s Food Runners, one of the nation’s first food recovery organizations. She has a BA in English Literature from Stanford University.
Consultants
Lynn M. Alexander, Program Coordinator, The Forces of Nature
Lynn M. Alexander is an environmental planner and principal of LMA Consulting. She has worked with a wide range of federal, state and local agencies, special districts, consulting firms and non-profits. Lynn is a long-time member of the American Planning Association (APA) and a certified planner since 1992. She has served on the Association of Environmental Professionals (AEP) board of directors and conference committees and has coordinated several conferences and workshops. Recent projects have involved analyses of renewable and natural gas energy projects for state licensing. Lynn holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from California State University and an M.S. in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco. She is currently working on a second Council of Elders’ project for RRI that focuses on U.S. government subsidy reform.
Nancy Graalman, Director, Defense of Place
Nancy M. Graalman’s commitment to protecting natural places arose from her sense of place and belonging to the red-earth plains, Cimarron River and Gypsum Hills that surround her hometown of Fairview in Northwestern Oklahoma. After majoring in German at Oklahoma State University, she earned a master’s in journalism from the University of Arizona. Her professional career includes 20 years as a medical and science writer in Tucson, Boise and San Francisco, where she has lived since 1981. During a drive past Sonoma County’s Pepperwood Ranch Preserve in January 1997, she saw a realtor’s sign announcing “37 Home sites for Sale,” a betrayal of the deed upon which Pepperwood had been granted to the California Academy of Sciences in 1980. Ms. Graalman initiated a public plea to stop the Academy, and through Huey Johnson’s intervention and founding of Defense of Place, Pepperwood was saved. Ms. Graalman is the Principal in Bay Laurel Communications, which focuses on health, science and conservation issues.
Susan Ives, Communications Consultant
Formerly Vice President for Public Affairs at the Trust for Pubilc Land, Susan remains an advocate for parks and public lands. She is currently working to protect California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, where local ranchers run more than 5,000 cattle inside a national park, polluting land and water and threatening the survival of rare native wildlife. She received RRI's Tule Elk Award in 2017 for her efforts. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Michigan and a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
Dr. Bernard Shanks, Council of Elders
Dr. Bernard Shanks, a fellow of the Resource Renewal Institute, has studied the six main stem Missouri River dams for over four decades. He has worked for the USGS, served as Director of the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife and advised CA and AZ governors on land and wildlife policy. The author of three books on public land policy and related subjects, he is now completing a book on the hazards of the Missouri River dams.
Steven Steinhour, Distinguished Research Fellow, Extreme Weather Community Resiliency Project
Steve Steinhour developed RRI’s Extreme Weather Resilience Project. After graduating from Stanford University and Yale Law School, Steve served as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. He returned to California and joined the staff of The Nature Conservancy, eventually becoming the Western Regional Vice President for TNC. Later he served as Deputy Director of the California State Park System. Returning to the conservation sector, he directed the national public land program for the Trust for Public Land.
Beginning in 1992, Steve had senior management positions in the commercial wind energy industry. He focused on analyzing both environmental and regulatory issues for potential commercial wind facilities in the United States and Western Canada. To date, he has supervised all environmental studies and secured all regulatory compliances for construction of over 600 MW of new wind energy projects in the states of Wyoming, Washington and Oregon.
Laci Videmsky, Project Director, New California Water Atlas
Using technology and new forms of community engagement, Laci explores innovative ways to activate citizens to participate in changing government. Currently, Laci is working on a web-based platform for the state of California that makes water understandable, data accessible, and underrepresented communities included in the ongoing water debate. Laci’s education and professional experiences have focused on designing appropriate and equitable solutions for the physical and virtual world. As an architect and product designer, Videmsky has worked with NGOs and non-profit sponsored projects that promote environmentally resilient, economically vital, and socially aware places and things. Laci holds a Masters degree in Architecture from Harvard University.
Vincent Tremblay, Videographer and Editor, The Forces of Nature
Vincent Tremblay is an independent filmmaker based in Berkeley. After graduating from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, Vincent moved to California to work as a video producer for CNET, utilizing a one-man crew approach to creating content involving technology and science. Vincent shoots video interviews and creates media pieces for GreenTech Media, CBS, and Sony Entertainment. He currently is the lead videographer and editor for RRI’s larger Environmental Elders Storytelling Project, and leads a team of two other assistant editors in the process.
Lauren Veen, Video Editor, The Forces of Nature
Lauren is a film editor and videographer based in Oakland. She graduated from Brown University with BA in History, earned Masters in Education at Mills College, and taught for many years in Bay Area public schools. Since completing a certificate program in digital filmmaking at San Francisco State University, Lauren has created promotional videos and documentary pieces for Bay Area non-profits and cooperatives. She operates the camera for Director/Producer Vanessa Workman’s environmental documentary “Three Hungry Teens” and is currently working on a documentary of her own.
Board of Directors
Elizabeth Baker, Board Chair
Chorister, San Francisco Opera, Berkeley, CA
Annette Gellert
Trustee, The Fred Gellert Family Foundation, Belevere, CA
Yvon Chouinard
Chairman, Lost Arrow Foundation
Founder and President, Patagonia, Inc., Chouinard Equipment Ltd., and Great Pacific Iron Works,
Ventura, CA
Bernard Shanks
Former Director, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, Orcas Island, WA
Ron Lovitt
Attorney (ret.), Lovitt & Hannan, Inc., Mill Valley, CA
Former Boardmembers
Huey D. Johnson
Founder, Resource Renewal Institute; Former Secretary for Natural Resources, State of California; Founder and former President, The Trust for Public Land; Corte Madera, CA
Bill Bryan
President, One Montana; Co-Founder, Off the Beaten Path; Bozeman, MT
Alfred E. Heller
Co-Founder, California Tomorrow; San Rafael, CA
Sylvia McLaughlin
Co-Founder, Save the Bay; Berkeley, CA
Marion Rockefeller Weber
Founder, Flow Fund, and Founder/Director, Arts and Healing Network; Stinson Beach, CA
FOUNDER
Huey D. Johnson, Chairman and Founder
Environmentalist Huey D. Johnson founded Resource Renewal Institute following his service as California Secretary of Resources in the Brown Administration (1978 -1982). His pioneering policy, Investing for Prosperity, was one of the first comprehensive and long-term environmental plans in existence. Since the early 1990’s, when the first nation-scale environmental policies appeared in the Netherlands and New Zealand, Mr. Johnson has promoted these and other Green Plans. He remains an authority on the subject and the third edition of his book, Green Plans: Blueprint for Sustainable Earth, was published in 2008 by University of Nebraska Press.