Project Management Team Biographies
Executive Project Manager
Steve Ritchie
Executive Project Manager, CA Coastal Conservancy
Steve Ritchie has a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University. He has served as Chief Deputy Director and Acting Executive Director of the CALFED Bay –Delta Program (1998-2000), Chief of the Bureau of System Planning and Compliance at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (1995-1998), and Executive Officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (1988-1995). From 2000 to 2004, he served as Director of URS Coporation’s Northern California Water and Wastewater Business. He has served as the Executive Project Manager of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project since 2004. He has also served since 2000 on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Estuary Institute.
State Coastal Conservancy
Amy Hutzel
Program Manager, SF Bay Program, California Coastal Conservancy
Amy Hutzel is Program Manager for the San Francisco Bay Area Program of the State Coastal Conservancy. She manages a staff of nine wonderful people who, with the passage of Proposition 84, will be responsible for over $100 million in funding to achieve the Conservancy's goals of open space protection, public access and recreation, and habitat restoration in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. From 2000 until 2006, she served as a project manager in the Conservancy's Bay Program, focused on wetland restoration projects, namely the Napa River Salt Marsh and the South Bay Salt Ponds, but also managing many other grants, including urban creek projects, Ridge Trail and Bay Trail projects, and land acquisitions. She has a bachelors degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia. She worked as an environmental educator at the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge and Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge and as education coordinator at Save San Francisco Bay Association prior to joining the State Coastal Conservancy in 2000.
Brenda Buxton
Project Manager, SF Bay Program, California Coastal Conservancy
Brenda Buxton has been a project manager at the Coastal Conservancy for seventeen years and worked on coastal trail and beach access, parkland acquisitions and planning, environmental education and wetland restoration projects. Ms. Buxton is the Conservancy's lead for the South Bay Shoreline Study—a planning project that will implement future Salt Pond Restoration phases in partnership with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Ms. Buxton has a B.A in History from UC Berkeley.
Ann Buell
Project Manager, SF Bay Program, California Coastal Conservancy
Ann Buell received a Master of Science degree in Natural Resources, interdisciplinary studies, from Humboldt State University. She has been a project manager in the San Francisco Bay Area Conservancy Program since February 2000, working in the nine Bay Area counties on restoration, planning and research, implementation, environmental education, and acquisition projects. She is the project manager for the Conservancy on the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, having joined the team in late 2006. She manages consultants and grantees, and assists in the oversight of the work plan, schedule, and budget for the project. As the restoration plan is implemented, she will focus primarily on the scientific aspects of the project.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Mendel Stewart
Project Leader, San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex
Mendel Stewart holds a Bachelor of Science from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Memphis. Mendel has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for over 21 years in several capacities. He has been an assistant refuge manager at Merritt Island and Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuges in Florida and Wildlife Management Biologist in Tennessee. In 1995 Mendel moved to the Service’s headquarters office in Washington DC and until 1998 represented the Service working on U.S. Department of Agriculture Conservation Programs. From 1998 – 2000 he was a Refuge Programs Specialist working on the implementation of policy resulting from the passage of the Refuge Improvement Act of 1997. From 2000 to 2005, Mendel was the Manager of the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge Complex and in June 2005 he became Project Leader of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex.
Clyde Morris
Refuge Manager, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Clyde received a Masters in Public Administration from Brigham Young University, a B.S. in Resource Planning and Interpretation from Humboldt State University and an AA in Park Management from West Valley Community College. He has worked for 30 years in Federal agencies focused on natural resource management and environmental protection in California, Utah, and Honduras, Central America. Clyde was born and raised in South San Francisco Bay communities. He is the manager of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
California Department of Fish and Game
Carl Wilcox
Habitat Conservation Manager, California Department of Fish and Game
Carl has been with DFG for 26 years, working on restoration projects and regulatory issues in San Francisco Bay and Southern California, including planning and implementation of Petaluma River Marsh and Eden Landing. He has been involved in many collaborative processes and is trained in interest-based negotiations. Carl’s role at DFG in this project includes participation in both development and implementation of the Initial Stewardship Plan and development and implementation of the Long-Term Restoration Plan, particularly for the Baumberg Ponds and Napa Plant Site Ponds, which are owned and managed by DFG.
John Krause
Associate Wildlife Biologist, California Department of Fish and Game
John Krause is the Department’s unit biologist for Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties. He is the manager of the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve and operates the salt pond complex according to the Initial Stewardship Plan. He performs various wildlife management activities for the Department including rare species and game species monitoring, managing other State-owned properties such as the on-going wetland restoration at the original 835-acre Eden Landing Ecological Reserve (also known as the Baumberg tract) and works in a trustee and regulatory role for the Department to ensure sensitive resources are conserved. He also serves as a technical advisor on federal, state, municipal and private wetland resource management projects. John’s background includes earning a Bachelor of Science degree at U.C. Davis in ecology and conservation, and prior to working for the Department, his positions included District Biologist for the Caltrans Oakland office, as well as working as a scientific aid with Department, as a crew leader for the Marin County Open Space District trails program and as an assistant to UC Davis researchers studying Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe Basin old growth forests.
Santa Clara Valley Water District
James M. Fiedler
Chief Operating Officer for Watersheds, Santa Clara Valley Water District
Jim Fiedler has over 20 years of engineering and management experience in the area of water supply and flood control, primarily with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves Silicon Valley’s population of 1.7 million. His technical experience includes regional water resources and flood management planning; design and construction of water and flood protection facilities. In 2000 he led the District’s Clean Safe Creeks and Natural Flood Protection Program development that culminated in successful voter support in the November 2000 election. He is a registered engineer in California. He is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a degree in civil engineering and graduate of Stanford University with a master in civil engineering.
A. Beth Dyer
Senior Project Manager, Santa Clara Valley Water District
Beth Dyer has 14 years of watershed planning and management experience, including ten years of riparian, in-stream and tidal wetland restoration. Beth is the District’s Environmental Planner on the Pond A4 Tidal Wetlands Mitigation Project. She assisted with the development of the City of San Jose’s Riparian Restoration Action Plan, and planned and managed the implementation of nine salmonid fisheries habitat enhancement projects in Santa Cruz County. She is a former member of the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District Board of Directors, where she provided technical assistance on watershed planning issues and restoration projects to stakeholder groups affiliated with five local watersheds. Beth is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in government, and has a second bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Watershed Restoration.
Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District
Ralph Johnson
Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District
Ralph Johnson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. After graduation, Ralph went to work for the Alameda County Flood Control District and worked there in a variety of positions. He was appointed to the Deputy Director of Public Works position in 1993 and retired from that position in 2000 after 30 years of service. Ralph continues to work part time for the Flood Control District and is responsible for developing a sediment management plan for Alameda Creek and participating in the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. Shortly after retiring in 2000, Ralph was appointed to a vacant position on the Castro Valley Sanitary District Board of Directors. In 2001 he successfully ran for that position and is currently serving a five year term of office. He was appointed in 2001 to the Board of Directors of the Alameda County Library Foundation and is currently serving as president of the Board.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Judy Sheen
Water Resources Planner, US Army Corps of Engineers
Dr. Judy Sheen holds an A.B. in Biology from Harvard-Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from University of California, Berkeley. As an academic biologist, her research topics included: cannibalistic polymorphism in Tiger Salamanders, the chameleon feeding mechanism, DNA relationships between amphibians, and reproductive costs in alligator lizards. Dr. Sheen has worked as a water resources planner for the San Francisco District of the Army Corps of Engineers since March 2002. Her past and current projects include the Napa Salt Marsh Restoration Project and various other ecosystem restoration efforts along the Alameda Flood Control Channel, St. Helena, and the Salt River in Humboldt County.
Lead Scientist
Lynne A. Trulio
San Jose State University
Dr. Trulio is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University, where she has taught and conducted research since 1991. She teaches courses in environmental impact assessment and environmental restoration, as well as graduate seminars and undergraduate courses. Her research investigates human impacts on species and habitats and seeks effective methods to mitigate or eliminate those impacts. Specific research has included studies of tidal salt marsh restoration in the San Francisco Bay, the effects of trail use on shorebirds and waterfowl, and the ecology and recovery of the western burrowing owl in California. From August 1999 to December 2000, as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Environmental and Engineering Fellow, she was an environmental scientist in the Wetlands Division, Office of Wetlands, Oceans & Watersheds of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. Her work focused on scientific and policy issues related to wetland monitoring, wetland restoration, and wetland wildlife issues. She holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis (1988) and an undergraduate degree in biology from Goucher College in Towson, MD (1979).
Lead Facilitator
Mary Selkirk
Center for Collaborative Policy
Mary Selkirk has eleven years of experience in environmental policy, with special expertise in water policy. She is skilled in mediation, facilitation, public policy development, group process and training. She has developed and facilitated workshops and trainings on collaborative processes for state agencies and private non-profits and currently co-teaches a course on Community Participation and Dispute Resolution at UC Davis extension. Ms. Selkirk received a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Oregon and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley. She also has specialized training in mediation, consensus-building and interest-based negotiation.