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From the Executive Director
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Greetings from the Switzer Foundation and welcome to our fall newsletter highlighting our 31st cohort of Switzer Fellows! Switzer Fellows are environmental leaders who embody the kind of interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches we sorely need to solve today's complex problems. The leadership and experience of this year's cohort from New England and California once again remind us that environmental issues are embedded in social and economic contexts that require new voices and new vision for the future. This year's Fellows bring that vision to their work.
The Switzer Foundation has been examining the role we can play to better integrate social equity into our work by recognizing that many of our environmental problems are the result of systemic failures to provide environmental protections and benefits to all communities. Today's leaders need to bring their scientific expertise, their communication skills, their community organizing and their policy savvy together to make positive change. Environmental grantmakers are recognizing that we need to support work that intersects with other fields and issues in order to achieve a deeper success that not only solves individual issues, but re-imagines and re-creates systems in which all communities can thrive.
As we see a convergence of increasing threats to communities and ecosystems from climate change, whether it is from devastating weather events such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria or the slow loss of habitat for species and drought impacts on our food system, Switzer Fellows and environmental leaders are well positioned to help society "connect the dots". As we do so, we are reminded of John Muir's famous quote "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe". Our universe includes the human communities whose lives and livelihoods remind us of our interdependence with our environment and the social and economic systems within which we live.
We know you will find hope in our new 2017 Switzer Fellows and in the promising work of our Fellowship alumni. Please visit our
Find an Expert page to learn more about our Fellows working in your field and how their leadership can be a resource for you.
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Meet the 2017 Fellows!
The core program of the Switzer Foundation, the
Switzer Fellowship Program
, supports highly talented graduate students who show outstanding leadership potential, and who are working towards environmental improvement.
Through their determination, ability, and integrity, Switzer Fellows are effecting positive change throughout the U.S. and around the world. Coming from diverse academic, social, and economic backgrounds, they are on the leading edge of environmental and social change across a wide spectrum of issues.
This year twenty environmental leaders, comprising the 31st class of Fellows, joined the Switzer Network of over 600 Fellows located across the country and around the world.
Learn about their work on pollinator health and disease ecology, green technology for clean energy generation, climate adaptation, environmental justice, international environmental peace-building, invasive species and climate change, air pollution and environmental policy, urban planning and equitable open space initiatives, and other critical issues.
Read more
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Foundation News
The Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation is working to better integrate equity into our vision of environmental leadership. As we aim to contribute to a pipeline of environmental leaders who are reflective of the changing demographics of the country, we are examining our own implicit biases and working with Fellows and alumni to learn how we can bridge diverse perspectives, background and leadership so that we can all forge a positive future.
We are also pleased to welcome the 2017-18 Fellows Advisory Committee members.
The Fellows Advisory Committee (FAC) is a group of 10-14 Fellows who advise Foundation staff and Board on selected policy and programmatic issues. The FAC is also a means for Switzer Fellows to contribute their wisdom and experience back to the Foundation to ensure that our programs and efforts are relevant for new Fellows and Fellowship Alumni. Through the FAC, Fellows can learn more about the operations of the Foundation and be considered for future service as a trustee, as was hoped for by the founders.
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Recent Leadership Grants
The Foundation helps advance the professional careers of Fellows by awarding
Leadership Grants
of up to $40,000 to qualified organizations that can benefit from Fellows' expertise on critical environmental issues.
$25,000 to Manomet (Brunswick, ME) to create a new position, Senior Scientist, for Marissa McMahan, focusing on developing a new program aimed at helping fishing communities adapt to a warming climate.
$25,000 to the Environmental Health Coalition (National City, CA) to create a new position, Senior Research Scientist, for Carolina Prado, leading two initiatives focused on environmental justice and public health in the border region.
See all recent recipients of Leadership Grants
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Network Innovation Grants
The Foundation supports
Switzer
Fellows working together across disciplines to solve complex problems through the
Network Innovation Grants
program.
This program provides seed grants of up to $10,000 to convene two or more Fellows to develop a strategy or solution to a problem. A key element of the program encourages Switzer Fellows to tap the Switzer Fellowship Network and colleagues with different sectoral expertise to contribute to solutions.
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Results of our Grants
Fellows Evan Hansen, President of Downstream Strategies in Morgantown, West Virginia, and Lara Cushing, Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University, teamed up with SkyTruth under a $40,000 Network Innovation Grant. Under this grant, the team completed an assessment of the expanding footprint of fracking operations in West Virginia, and analyzed the public health implications of the chemicals used in those operations.
Fellow Heather Hulton Van Tassel and Audubon South Carolina teamed up under a $40,000 Switzer Leadership Grant to develop programs to build bird-friendly communities, and to advance climate-resilient initiatives in South Carolina that focus on native plants, community outreach and education, and community-based conservation activities.
California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS) received two years of Switzer Leadership Grant support for a total of $40,000 to launch a new staff position for Ildi Carlisle-Cummins as Director of the Cal Ag Roots program. Cal Ag Roots, created by Ildi, aims to put historical roots under current California food and farming movements by telling the stories of California's agricultural development in innovative, useful, and relevant ways.
Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge received a $15,000 Leadership Grant to promote Fellow Ryan Carle to a new position of Conservation Training and Development Manager to oversee the organization's conservation work in Chile on a threatened seabird species, the Pink-Footed Shearwater. His work focuses on engaging the local community in conservation efforts, which resulted in several important principles and lessons for future work.
More than ever, we are living in a data-driven world, where stories are enlightening but data drives the bottom line. Funders, policy makers, regulators, resource managers, and other decision makers rely on data to guide strategy. This $4,000 Network Innovation planning grant enabled Fellows Nicole Ardoin and Christy Merrick to develop a collaboration on a major new initiative to coalesce and analyze the existing research base on environmental education and its effects on student achievement and environmental outcomes.
Dr. Tracey Osborne, partnering with Amazon Watch on the Climate Alliance Mapping Project, built a platform that factually and compellingly demonstrates the geographic footprint of Amazonian oil reserves and the human and natural resources its extraction threatens. Under this Switzer Leadership Grant, Dr. Osborne and colleagues developed and launched the website for the Climate Alliance Mapping Project
which contains not only the maps and geographical information about extraction activities in the Amazon region, but stories from local residents who have been directly impacted.
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The Switzer Network in Action
Ayana Johnson was a co-leader of the March for Science.
John Andrew, Assistant Deputy Director at California's Department of Water Resources, was appointed to the new California Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group.
Margaret Torn, a senior scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Earth & Environmental Sciences Area, was named a 2017 American Geophysical Union Fellow.
Nathan Hall was on Yale's winning team this year in the Patagonia Case Competition.
Christopher Maroshegyi, a Director at the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, DC, was selected to be a Marshall Memorial Fellow for leadership development in Germany.
Asa Bradman, an associate professor of environmental health science at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, was appointed to the National Organics Standards Board.
Carolina Prado is a recipient of the Environmental Fellows Program administered by the University of Michigan. The Fellowship aims to support environmental leaders and increase racial diversity in the nonprofit and philanthropic organizations in the US through training and summer internship positions.
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Upcoming Events
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2017 California Fall Fellows' Retreat
October 13-15, 2017
Online registration is now closed for this retreat, but please contact
Erin Lloyd, Program Director,
if you are interested in attending. There is a short waiting list for the Rockwood leadership training, but we'd love to see Fellows and colleagues on Saturday night and/or Sunday!
Agenda
2018 Switzer Environmental Fellowship deadlines
October 2, 2017: Application period opens
January 8, 2018: Applications due
May, 2018: Final selection interviews in Boston and San Francisco
We are seeking Fellows
who possess the self-awareness and personal commitment to developing their leadership skills over the course of their career, and to those who value being a member of an active, vibrant, engaged network of environmental professionals. We accept applications from both master's- and PhD-level candidates. We will be especially interested in seeing
more
applications from leading master's candidates this year, and from people working on issues of environmental justice and equity.
2018 Switzer Fellowship Guidelines
Switzer Fellows Spring Retreat and Policy Communications Workshop
Saturday, March 10 - Monday, March 12, 2018
Washington, D.C.
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A vibrant community of environmental leaders
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