Staff & Board Biographies

Board of Directors

Professional Staff

Past Directors & Staff

Patty Brissenden, Board Chair, lives in the incredibly beautiful Hope Valley, home to Sorensen's Resort, which she has co-owned with her husband John for 20 years. Patty is credited with having landed a $25 million grant for Hope Valley watershed management. She was a key speaker at the "Sierra Now" conference held in Sacramento 1992. She is a founder and current Board member of the Sierra Nevada Alliance, and is of the Friends of Hope Valley.

Before moving to the Sierra, she and John lived in Santa Cruz County, where Patty served as the Chief of Staff to then Assembly member Sam Farr (now a Congressman). She also worked on Leon Panetta's staff during the 1970's. During that time she helped to found the Santa Cruz Community Foundation.

Emily Rivenes, Operations Manager & Financial Controller, has been working in finance for the past 18 years. She maintain her securities and insurance licenses through Commonwealth Financial. Her prior experience involves financial planning most recently as well as bookkeeping and banking. Her impeccable organizational skills help keep the office running smoothly and establish a framework for the organization's future growth. She has recently obtained her Real Estate Agent license to help people buy & sell homes.

As an emerging environmentalist, Emily recently left the private sector to join the non-profit world. She has been an active volunteer for SYRCL (South Yuba River Citizen's League) for several years. She volunteers at all fundraising events as well as the monthly River monitoring program.

Emily lives on Rock Creek outside of Nevada City with her husband David and son Alec. They enjoy all the outdoor activities the area has to offer. Personally, she loves to swim in the Yuba, knit with her friends and cook for those she loves.

Terry Lowe, Director of Philanthropic Services, has managed The Sierra Fund’s community foundation arm since 2003. She handles all of the Fund’s grantmaking activities, working with donors and organizations to direct resources for strategic conservation efforts within the Sierra and beyond.

In previous staff positions with the Shalan Foundation, Common Counsel Foundation and the Tides Foundation, Terry has worked with donors and grantmaking initiatives on a wide range of issues spanning the fields of social, economic and environmental justice. She has also worked as an independent consultant for over 15 years, helping to raise many millions of dollars from public and private sources for organizations working to make the world a better place. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1989.

Terry lives in Rough and Ready, CA with her partner and two children. She volunteers with the BriarPatch Co-op in Grass Valley and is an enthusiastic local food advocate. In her other life she is a writer, editor, poet and memoirist.

Elizabeth Martin, C.E.O. of The Sierra Fund, is a community organizer and environmental advocate with twenty-five years of experience working in rural communities to promote economic and environmental justice. She has worked with a wide diversity of constituencies, fro m farm workers and cannery workers to small farmers and rural environmentalists, and has helped in the development of a number of programs to promote organic agriculture and reduce community exposure to toxic pesticides and industrial contaminants.

While serving on the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, Ms. Martin led the fight in the state legislature to put the South Yuba River into the state’s wild and scenic river program. Ms. Martin has taught organizing, fundraising, organizational development and meeting facilitation skills workshops for more than two decades. She has helped to found several statewide and community organizations, and been an advocate in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. Izzy and her two children live in Grass Valley.

Drummond Pike founded Tides Foundation in 1976, and serves as President of Tides Foundation, Tides Center, and Groundspring.org. He is also President of Highwater, Inc., an innovative real estate development venture in Presidio National Park of San Francisco that rehabilitates historic buildings, converting them into offices for social change and environmental nonprofits. Mr. Pike was a founder and Associate Director of the Youth Project following a long student involvement in the anti-war movement of the late 1960s. He also served as Executive Director of the Shalan Foundation from 1976 to 1981 and helped found Working Assets in 1983.

Mr. Pike and his family live in San Francisco, and stay in their cabin near Donner Summit whenever they can.

Bill Newsom is a retired State Court of Appeals Judge who has a long history of working to protect the natural environment. Mr. Newsom has served on the State Parks Commission and the Lahontan Water Quality Control Board, and is currently the Executor of the Getty Trust.

Mr. Newsom has a done a lifetime of work to protect the world's natural resources. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Earth Justice and Environmental Defense. Mr. Newsom makes his home in Dutch Flat.

Shawn Garvey was the Founder and President of The Sierra Fund. Mr. Garvey is the former Executive Director of the Nevada City based South Yuba River Citizens League, which during his tenure grew to be the largest single-river advocacy organization in the United States. Under his leadership SYCRL created a nonprofit law firm for California rivers known as RiverLaw, a new regional newspaper, and successfully advocated to secure new funds for non-dam flood control and river restoration.

Prior to this, Mr. Garvey served as Special Projects Representative for the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Rural Development during the Clinton Administration. He is a founder of a nationally recognized political research and communications firm, Smart Campaigns.

Jerry Meral recently retired as the Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League. Mr. Meral served under Governor Jerry Brown as Deputy Director of the Department of Water Resources in the 1980's, and has become one of the state's outstanding experts on water and conservation issues. He was instrumental in the writing of nearly every resource conservation bond passed in the last twenty years, and is a well respected advocate for environmental causes.

An avid back packer and boater, Mr. Meral knows the Sierra intimately. He lives in Marin County.

Rob Moser is the owner of Pettigrew Financial Corporation. Through this independent company he provides investment management services to individual and corporate clients. Rob is also a Certified Financial Planner. In addition, Rob has been a farmer on Grand Island in the Sacramento River Delta for the past 35 years. His ranch on Steamboat Slough produces pears, apples, peaches and blueberries. He lives in Sacramento and is the proud father of three talented daughters. He is a fourth generation Californian and keenly interested in preserving and protecting California’s amazing natural resources.

Kerry Morse, Communications and Administrative Assitant, began working with The Sierra Fund in April 2007. She handles office administration, database management and editing, and assists with special projects. Kerry’s first interest in the western environment was sparked growing up in Bozeman, MT. After studying four years of language, philosophy, literature, math and science she earned her B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. She now lives in Nevada City and is excited that her position lets her pursue her interest in conservation and devotion to the West. Kerry also tutors in German and higher math. When not working, she enjoys reading, playing the fiddle, and exploring her new home in the Sierra.

John Regan, Secretary, is a founding board member of the Sierra Fund.

John is a partner in Smart Campaigns, a national political consulting firm specializing in strategic research, issues analysis and media relations. John’s clients include more than thirty current and former members of Congress, a dozen U.S. senators, and statewide officeholders and political organizations in more than a dozen states nationwide.

In addition to his political work, John has helped craft public relations and lobbying campaigns for major U.S. corporations, law firms, interest groups and international clients.

John has designed strategic campaigns for numerous community-based non-profits and environmental organizations including the South Yuba River Citizens League’s historic campaign for state Wild and Scenic River protection for the South Yuba River. John has coordinated environmental representation on several ambitious collaborative studies of the restoration of endangered salmon and steelhead populations in the upper Yuba River Watershed.

A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, John is a graduate of Boston University, where he studied journalism and international relations. After college, John served as a language and history instructor at an English teacher training college in southeastern Poland.

John currently lives and works in Nevada City, California with his wife, Sarah, and their two dogs and two cats.

John Hellwig (Bio Coming)

Michael Funk, prior chair of The Sierra Fund board is currently the Chief Executive Officer of United Natural Foods Inc. of Auburn, California, the nation's largest wholesale distributor to the natural and organic industry. The company's sales of $1.18 billion in 2002 also place it as one of the largest businesses in the Sierra Nevada. Mr. Funk was the Founder of Mountain People's Warehouse in 1976, growing to be the largest West Coast distributor of organic and natural products before merging with Cornucopia Natural Foods in 1996.

Mr. Funk also serves on the Board of Directors of the South Yuba River Citizens League, and owns a section of the river in the newly designated State Wild and Scenic River coordinator.

Greg Francis has been a Nevada County resident his whole life and spent his summers backpacking in the Sierra with his family. There he developed a deep love of nature, the Sierra, and particularly the beautiful Middle Fork of the Yuba River where his family owns undeveloped land.

Greg earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting from California State University in 1988, becoming a certified public accountant in 1990. He runs an accounting firm in Grass Valley with his partners Dave Scinto & George Graziano. He also develops property, most recently the Briarpatch project on Litton Hill in Grass Valley. He is proud to be involved in this building project as it will be the first privately developed LEED (usgb.org) certified building in Nevada County. His next project will be the first true walk-able, mixed use community in Nevada County.

Greg serves on the boards of directors of several Nevada County businesses and currently serves on the Friendship Club Board. He is a past director for nonprofit organizations that include Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation, the 49er Rotary Club, Mount Saint Mary’s Academy and the Foundation of Resources for Equality and Employment of the Disabled (FREED). Greg is a founding member and President of the Rotary Club of Nevada County South.

Greg’s wife Kathryn Francis is a Nevada County Deputy District Attorney and between them they have four wonderful children ranging from 8 – 19 years of age.

Martha Davis was the visionary founder and Executive Director of the Mono Lake Committee. She led this organization in a program to "brand" Mono Lake, and gained national recognition for the Committee's efforts to save Mono Lake. She was particularly successful in building strong political and community alliances with Los Angeles based organizations interested in protecting Mono Lake.

Ms. Davis's expertise as an organizer and water policy advocate have won her a great deal of recognition. She currently serves as the Chair of the CalFed Watershed Committee. She has been a featured speaker at events from the annual POWER conference in Los Angeles to the California State Association of Counties. Ms. Davis is now the Executive Manager of Policy Development for the Inland Empire Utility Agency, which delivers services to "rural" Riverside County. More than 700,000 residents of the Chino Valley receive sanitation and water services through this agency.