Staff
Heather MacSlarrow
Executive Director
Heather grew up in Northwest Washington and Hong Kong, both of which gave her an appreciation for wilderness and solitude. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, and from there embarked on a 10-year adventure in public land and Wilderness stewardship with conservation corps across the West from Arizona to Alaska. She worked with the Washington Conservation Corps, Rocky Mountain Youth Corps in Steamboat Springs, Montana Conservation Corps, Youth Corps of Southern Arizona, Southwest Conservation Corps in Tucson, and Southwest Conservation Corps in Salida. Her last position in corps was as the founder and Executive Director of the Southwest Conservation Corps in Salida, Colorado. Heather left corps work to pursue her Masters of Natural Resources through the University of Idaho and work with the Colorado Mountain Club as the Lands Director. Through these positions, Heather worked with many Wilderness Areas, including: Buffalo Peaks, Collegiate Peaks, Sangre de Cristo, Great Sand Dunes, Spanish Peaks, South San Juan, Weminuche, La Garita, Admiralty Island, Glacier Bay, Wrangell Saint Elias, Misty Fjords, Kenai, Organ Pipe, Chiricahua, Gila, Saguaro, Rincon Mountain, North and South Maricopa Mountains, Superstition, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains, Selway Bitterroot, Rattlesnake, Mission Mountains, Bob Marshall, Mount Zirkel, and High Uintas.
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Heather is highly dedicated to the professional stewardship and management of Wilderness. She sees this as the key to allowing Wilderness to do what Wilderness does best - facilitate life-changing experiences and maintain important ecological systems, both of which provide essential support for, and strengthen, our communities.
Claire Anderson
Wilderness Dayen
Claire grew up in Western Washington and developed a love for the outdoors as a child through annual camping trips to Mt. Rainier with family friends. After receiving her B.A. in Environmental Policy and GIS at Western Washington University, she spent several years exploring the environmental sector, including working at a land trust and farm, an environmental lab, and timber cruising in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. Claire recently completed a M.S. in Natural Resources at Cal Poly Humboldt and is excited to have more time to explore the redwood forests and learn more about the Northern California landscape in the Shasta-Trinity and Mendocino National Forests. In her free time, she enjoys mountain biking, skiing, attempting to sew, and obsessing over her dog, Freya.
Isabel Bauer
Wilderness Dayen
Isabel studied environment and geography at Michigan State University and wielded her GIS skills at Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) before finding her way to SWS in April of 2023. She has since been monitoring wilderness character in the Hiawatha and Huron-Manistee National Forests of her home state and providing support for WCM in wildernesses across the country. Outside of sharing her passion for wild spaces, Isabel also has a great love for solo adventures, folk music, and bodies of freshwater.
Valerie Brazfield
Wilderness Dayen
Valerie graduated in 2016 from St. Cloud State University with a B.S. in Environmental Studies paired with a Paralegal Certification. She developed a strong passion for environmental advocacy as well as citizen stewardship and the protection of our natural environment. She worked as an Environmental Legal Technician and successfully assisted her legal team in challenging and altering the Sandpiper Pipeline Project and the USACE Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area Flood Risk Management Project. She went on to practice artisan goat cheese making and worked on a small goat dairy farm in Skagit Valley, Washington. She enjoyed learning about sustainable agriculture and its impacts on the local environment. She also worked with Washington State Parks in their Northwest Region and fell in love with the striking beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Since then she became a team member of The CROP (Cannabis Removal on Public Lands) Project and helped raise national awareness on the environmental crime taking place in some of our most pristine natural spaces. Wherever she goes, Valerie seeks out local environmental learning centers and volunteers her time. She loves environmental education and helping to provide communities with opportunities for local stewardship. Valerie is currently based in Knoxville, Tennessee, working on the Wilderness Character Monitoring on Angelina - Sabine, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston National Forests. In her free time, she likes to go camping and hiking with her family, cook new recipes, and create fun art.
Mitch Clark
Wilderness Dayen
Mitch Clark is a documentary filmmaker from Salt Lake City, UT. He received his graduate degree in environmental science & natural resource journalism from the University of Montana in Missoula, MT. He has received awards for his work from the Society of Professional Journalism and various film festivals. Storytelling at the intersection of adventure and human/landscape interaction is his passion. When he's not behind the lens, Mitch can be found on the trails running and riding with his dogs.
Hannah Cochlin
Wilderness Dayen
Hannah grew up in Minnesota and graduated with a BS in Environmental Science with certificates in Sustainability and Global Health from the University of Wisconsin. She has held many roles in the climate and food justice fields and has also spent a lot of her time working with youth. She is passionate about making the outdoors accessible to everyone, no matter their background or location. Before her role with SWS, she worked at the US Fish and Wildlife Service managing a summer internship for a crew of 12 in the Twin Cities metro area. Hannah is currently working on Wilderness Character Monitoring in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. When she's not on the job, she can be found cooking new recipes, traveling to new and exciting places, reading in her hammock, tending to her garden, hosting game nights, and hiking/camping whenever possible.
Julia Cotter
Program Director
Julia graduated from Colorado College in 2018 with a degree in Organismal Biology and Ecology. Since graduating, she has conducted research in riverine and forest ecology with a focus on entomology. In 2019, she moved to Montana to conduct research with the University of Montana Flathead Biological Station where she worked in the floodplains of the Flathead River, Glacier National Park, and across western Montana and northern Idaho. In 2021, she led the first all-women trail crew for the Montana Conservation Corps, clearing and maintaining trails in the Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church Wildernesses. Through her work, she has developed a fierce love of wild spaces and hopes to dedicate her career to better understanding and protecting them. In her free time, she likes to hike, bake, knit, and cross-country ski with her dog Monty.
Ben Gelderloos
Wilderness Dayen
Ben grew up in Boulder, Colorado exploring the outdoors and developing a passion to conserve nature. He graduated from Colorado College in 2021 with a degree in Environmental Studies. His excitement for learning deeply about wild places brought him to study Maori co-management in Aotearoa New Zealand and sustainable recreation in Nepal. That enthusiasm continues in working for SWS to help preserve Forest Service wilderness areas in California. He has previously worked as a multi-day bike guide across the American West, as a Wilderness Ranger Intern, and in the bike industry. Now based in Redding, CA, Ben enjoys long bike rides (outside of Wilderness), bikepacking, and hiking.
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Victoria Jarvis
Wilderness Information Director
Vick ​started working for SWS as a Fellow in 2020 when her local Forest entered a partnership to complete the Wilderness Character Baseline work for their 8 Wilderness areas. Prior to SWS, she worked as a Wilderness Ranger for the Forest Service for 8 years. In her time with the Forest Service, she helped manage protocol and project development for various elements of the Wilderness Stewardship Performance program for the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. During grad school, she merged her two loves of Wilderness and maps in a Natural Resources program with coursework and research focused on Wilderness management and geospatial analysis of campsite impacts. When she's not thinking about or spending time in Wilderness, she's probably knitting sweaters, sewing, staring at topographic maps, riding her bike, shoveling snow, or sitting by the fire with her husband at their home in central Washington state.
Ali Laird
Wilderness Dayen
Ali is from Lolo, Montana and has a BA in Humanities from Villanova University and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on the ontology and values central to conservation biology. She is particularly interested in species concepts and the practical implications of the species problem on environmental laws and protections. She is also interested in wildlife reintroduction ethics, large carnivore management, and land use planning. Ali has worked in western Montana for the Forest Service and various conservation collaboratives on a number of applied forest ecology and resource management projects, including invasive plant control, monitoring logging impacts, and documenting the effects of repeat wildfires on ecosystem structure. In her free time she likes to cook and trail run, and is always trying to get better at plant ID.
Kat Lyons
Wilderness Planning Director
Kat started working for SWS as a Fellow in 2016, working on Wilderness Character Montoring for 26 wilderness areas across Region 4 of the Forest Service and a stint in Florida as a Fellow for the Gulf Islands National Seashore for the National Park Service. As the SWS National Program Coordinator, she supported the National Wilderness Fellow program for two field seasons. She left to pursue her graduate degree at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, where she received her Masters in Environmental Management in 2020. Her masters project focused on the role that non-tribal partners could play to support more inclusive and collaborative landscape conservation strategies. After graduating, she worked as the Conservation Project Coordinator for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, where she brought her love of collaborative landscape conservation to develop a strategic plan with leading conservation experts to conserve the ecological integrity and climate resilience of the 14 state region within the Appalachian Landscape.
Kat is excited to be back with SWS as the Wilderness Planning Director. Kat looks forward to using her interdisciplinary background in environmental science and policy, landscape conservation planning, and skills in coordinating collaborative conservation projects to work on the largest national forest in the nation, the Tongass. In her free time, you can find Kat backpacking, fly fishing, or sitting around a campfire with friends.
Brenna McDaniel
Wilderness Dayen
Brenna is from Bellingham Washington and graduated from Western Washington University in 2022 with a BA in Business & Sustainability, along with a minor in Political Science. For her capstone project she created a framework to institutionalize zero waste practices at all university-sponsored events to maximize waste diversion on campus. She previously interned at a nonprofit conducting research on nature-based solutions for regenerative agriculture, which aligns with her passion for climate change mitigation and adaptation to advance environmental justice. In her free time she enjoys exploring all that the North Cascades and British Columbia have to offer through hiking, climbing, and biking.
Matthew Merritt
Wilderness Dayen
Matthew is originally from West Winfield, NY and graduated from Paul Smith’s College in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Management. Post graduation, Matthew pursued a Master of Environmental Management at Western Colorado University. Matthew’s thesis project centered around the need for expansion of land stewardship resources in the Gunnison Valley. Working as a Wilderness Dayen last year, Matthew and Co-Dayen Jessica Knuckolls produced 5 year Wilderness Character Updates for all of the BLM Wilderness areas in Colorado. Currently, Matthew is working as a BLM Dayen with a focus on producing GIS maps for a large ranch acquisition adjacent to the Dominguez Escalante National Conservation Area. Matther’s other focus for this contract is producing a commercial needs assement for the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness. In Matthew’s free time he enjoys snowboarding, hiking, video gaming, and grilling.
Cody Moran
BLM Coordinator
Cody lives on the south shore of Massachusetts and received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His journey into
wilderness stewardship began in 2022 when he joined the Society for Wilderness Stewardship (SWS) as a Wilderness Fellow in the Tongass National Forest. During this time, Cody immersed himself in Southeast Alaska, completing baseline reports for the Sitka and Wrangell Ranger Districts. His favorite area was the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness, where his passion for wilderness blossomed. Building upon his fellowship, Cody transitioned to a role with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as a Wilderness Dayen, focusing on WCM at the headquarters level. This included a comprehensive update of the BLM's WCM Implementation Guide. Alongside these responsibilities, Cody took on the role of SWS BLM Coordinator, overseeing the completion of BLM baseline/5-year reports in Colorado, California, and Oregon/Washington. Beyond his professional pursuits, Cody finds fulfillment in coaching high school track and cross country. He also enjoys running, golfing, live music, and exploring whichever coastline he stumbles upon.
Jessy Nuckolls
Wilderness Dayen
Jessy grew up in Woodstock, Georgia but now calls Fruita, Colorado home. She earned a BS in Zoology, Conservation and Biodiversity from Auburn University and an M.P.P. in Environmental Policy from Georgia State University. Jessy has several years of experience in the non-profit realm, particularly with program development, habitat monitoring, and outreach initiatives for underserved communities. She is driven by her passion to conserve habitats and ecosystems through policy work while promoting outdoor accessibility and equity for all. Jessy can be found outside hiking or running with her dog and inside reading or cooking Southern comfort food.
Adrian Ortiz
Wilderness Dayen
Adrian is from a bordertown city located in west Texas called El Paso. He is a double major who graduated with a degree in Public Relations and Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2016. Adrian's passion and love for nature is deeply rooted from his childhood. As a child till today, he has always spent a lot of time camping, fishing, and hiking. He has added a few more hobbies now which include climbing/bouldering, backpacking, and whitewater rafting. His dog Bambi is more than happy to tag along on the adventures. Adrian likes to dedicate some of his free time volunteering to lead small group day hikes and backpacking trips in the wilderness. He is also a volunteer member of the search and rescue group in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Currently, Adrian will be doing wilderness character monitoring in the Gila National Forest located just right outside of Silver City, New Mexico.
Ben Pope
Wilderness Dayen
Originally from New York, Ben has cut his teeth in Colorado and the West for the last several years. A BA in Philosophy & English, followed by years of passionate recreation in the mountains, eventually lead to graduate work at Colorado State University in land and wildlife management. He spent the last 3 years doing wilderness and trail work with the US Forest Service along with private ranch work after time in the hospitality industry. He is currently diving into Wilderness Character Monitoring within the White River National Forest and hopes to jive on the ground knowledge of the area with research on wilderness conditions. Ben enjoys time outside with his daughter shredding pow, hoofing up trails, roasting marshmallows at camp and seeking the perfect King Bolete.
Corrinne Scieszka
Wilderness Dayen
Corrinne grew up in southwest Michigan, initially developing her love and appreciation for the outdoors along the shorelines of Lake Michigan while roaming the nearby sand dunes. She graduated in 2020 from the University of Michigan with a dual BS in ecology and environmental law and policy, with a research focus on climate adaptation planning in Michigan communities. Upon graduating, she moved out to Northern California to work as a project specialist focused on rural community development and collaborative forest management in the Sierra Nevada. Here, she fell in love with hiking and exploring the nearby national forests and wilderness areas. Eventually, she relocated to Wyoming to pursue an MS in Environment, Natural Resources, and Society from the University of Wyoming. She is excited to bring her love of wild places and experience to the work of wilderness monitoring. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, backpacking, running, and reading.
Michelle Tanz
Program Coordinator
USFS R6 Wilderness Lead
Michelle lives in Bellingham, Washington and has worked for SWS since 2020, writing baseline reports for wilderness areas across the Pacific Northwest. Previously, she worked for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest as a Forestry Technician seasonally. She graduated from Western Washington University with a self-designed major in “Environmental Science in Society,” along with minors in Biology and Spanish. In alignment with her passion for wilderness, Michelle is an avid backcountry skier and North Cascades enthusiast. She enjoys long walks in the mountains and nerding out on plants, scat, tracks and mushrooms! ​
Logan Whiles
Wilderness Dayen
Logan grew up hiking, climbing, and nurturing his love for wild things in eastern Tennessee. He earned a BS in Biology from Middle Tennessee State University in 2016 and an MS in Natural Resource Sciences from Washington State University in 2021. Logan’s recent work primarily revolved around the ecology of taxa such as Canada lynx, hoary marmots, and anadromous salmonids in the North Cascades Ecosystem. Logan’s background also includes a diverse set of roles such as zookeeping intern at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere, trail crewmember in the Smokies, interpretive ranger with the Tennessee State Parks, facilities supervisor at a Wild Ungulate Facility, and data analyst for various research projects. Though Logan is still an avid fan of science and research, he’s found there’s at least one simple conclusion for wildlife conservation: protect pristine landscapes. Logan is excited to play a part in responsibly managing our most protected lands as he takes on his new role as a Wilderness Dayen in Washington and Oregon with SWS.
Alec Youngblood
Wilderness Dayen
Alec, an Oregon native, is establishing Wilderness Character Baselines for the Willamette/Deschutes National Forests. A 2020 graduate of Oregon State University (OSU) with a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife, his capstone research assessed the efficacy of the Oregon Marine Reserves. He then held seasonal positions with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), operating the Siletz Falls fish trap and conducting a Chinook radio telemetry study. Interested in the intersection of humanity and nature, he also spent a season as a Sustainable Tourism Intern through OSU’s Marine Studies Initiative. Recently, he worked in aquatic habitat restoration, designing projects and conducting field surveys on the southern Oregon coast. Alec, a life-long student of the natural world, loves getting outdoors and exploring. He is especially interested in land-use change and its often-overlooked contribution to our changing climate. He is overjoyed to be able to contribute to wilderness stewardship with the SWS.