Vanessa is the Colorado Senior Program Manager for the Southwest Regional Office and can often be found traipsing through the diverse and beautiful parks of this state.
Vanessa came to NPCA from the Gates Foundation, where she managed a portfolio of communications and public engagement grants on international development and health issues. Prior to that, she produced independent research on collaborative watershed management for the US Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology, and worked on her dissertation focused on governance issues in the Upper Rio Grande basin. She consulted for the Trust for Public Land, where she helped launch a working lands conservation program, and worked for Conservation Strategies, a political consulting firm in the Pacific Northwest. She completed her M.A. from the University of Washington in Environmental Anthropology. Vanessa returned to her home state of Colorado from Seattle to manage NPCA’s Colorado field office. She lives in Boulder with her husband, Clark, and their two young kids, Dollie and Beau.
