Management Structure
Project Management Team Biographies
Executive Project Manager
John Bourgeois
Executive Project Manager, CA Coastal Conservancy
John has over 15 years of experience working on large-scale wetland restoration projects. For the past 11 years he has been a restoration ecologist with the Los Gatos-based ecological consulting firm H.T. Harvey & Associates. John is well-acquainted with the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, having worked on the initial planning and permitting phases of the restoration, as well as many other related projects in the South Bay, including Bair Island. Prior to moving to California in 1999, John worked for the National Wetland Research Center, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, and the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry. He has an M.S. in biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a B.S. in biology from Tulane University.
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.
Eric Mruz
Refuge Manager, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Eric Mruz is manager of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge which covers over 30,000 acres in South San Francisco Bay. Eric graduated from Saint Cloud State University with a Bachelor of Science degree. He managed the Alviso area of the Refuge for four and a half years before taking over as Refuge manager in January 2009.
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.
Beth Dyer
Senior Project Manager, Santa Clara Valley Water District
Beth is the Senior Project Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s San Francisco Bay Shoreline Project. She is a member of the Project Management Team of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, and a member of the South San Francisco Bay Shoreline Study Management Team.
Beth has over 17 years of watershed planning and management experience, including riparian, in-stream and tidal wetland restoration. 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 currently a member of Board of Directors of Friends of the Estuary, and is a former member of the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District Board of Directors.
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
Laura Valoppi
U.S. Geological Survey
Laura Valoppi serves as lead scientist through the USGS's Western Ecological Research Center. She has a diverse background that includes experience related to the bay, biological resources, water quality and grants management. She worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the 12 years as a lead biologist for various environmental contaminant and oil spill cases, as well as working on regional conservation plans to protect threatened and endangered species. Her work as lead biologist included field work in oil spill response and environmental contaminant studies, as well as development and review of ecological risk assessments. Laura was lead biologist for the Service during the Montrose Natural Resource Damage Assessment trial, and subsequent to a favorable settlement, was lead for the Service in a multi-agency effort to restore bald eagles to the northern Channel Islands and Catalina Island. She was also lead biologist, and latter supervisor, for a program to conserve ESA-listed species through working with local governments to develop large-scale regional habitat conservation plans throughout northern California. The last four years with the Service, she has been a manager of a grant program to the States, which distributes approximately $86 million to California and Nevada, to support a variety of management, restoration and research activities to benefit a wide variety of game, non-game, and ESA-listed species. Prior to her work with the Service, she worked for about 10 years for the State of California, primarily as a toxicologist for a variety of human and ecological risk assessments. She has served as President and Vice President of the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Her B.S. degree in Natural Resources is from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her M.S. degree is in Water Science from the University of California at Davis.
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.
Project Manager of the Shoreline Study
Len Cardoza
WESTON Solutions, Inc.
Len Cardoza has over 35 years of experience funding, planning, conducting and supervising major programs and projects related to watershed management, maintenance dredging, navigation improvements, environmental impact analysis, infrastructure, storm water management, military base closure, and water resources in Europe and throughout the United States. Currently with WESTON Solutions Inc., Len was with the Port of Oakland for 12 years and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 20 years. He brings to the project an ability to develop solutions to address multiple objectives including navigation, shore protection, water quality, flood control, habitat restoration, parks recreation and open space. Len has a M.S. from Central Michigan University, a B.S from Santa Clara University, and is a certified environmental professional.