Core Team
Travis Anklam, Projects and Education Coordinator
travis.anklam@umontana.edu
Travis Anklam is the Projects and Education Coordinator at the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. Travis facilitates and coordinates many of the Center’s projects and collaborative learning activities, connecting and empowering people to address complex problems and realize better outcomes for their landscapes and communities. He serves as co-chair of the Center’s Natural Resources Conflict Resolution Graduate Certificate Program, supporting emerging collaborative leaders from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. He also works with several regional networks that connect people to advance landscape stewardship, including the Western Collaborative Conservation Network, California Landscape Stewardship Network, and the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent.
Prior to joining the Center, Travis received a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies and a graduate certificate in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution from the University of Montana. He also spent half a decade as an outdoor educator in Washington state and the Midwest after earning a BA from Luther College. Travis lives in Missoula where he enjoys gardening, winter, and time on the Clark Fork River.
Richard Forbes, Project Coordinator
richard.forbes@umontana.edu
Richard Forbes is a Project Coordinator at the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy where he helps build collaborative processes that help people relate to one another and their landscapes. Most recently, he helped support the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent by conducting a collaborative needs assessment as the group enters its second decade and reassesses its role and capacity in the region.
For the last 10 years, Richard has worked across Colorado, Washington, and Montana as a backcountry guide, environmental writer and facilitator. In each role, he hopes to build and explore the stories and relationships between people and place.
Richard has a bachelor's degree in ecology from Colorado College, as well as a master's degree in environmental journalism and a graduate certificate in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution from the University of Montana. When he's not working, he's out in the mountains or playing music.
Alexis Gibson, Senior Project Manager
alexis.gibson@umontana.edu
Alexis Gibson is a Senior Project Manager at the Center. She supports the group’s collaboration and consensus building processes through research, engaging with stakeholders, facilitation and process design, and project management; she also provides operational support to the Center’s communications. While Alexis works across all areas in the Center’s portfolio, she has a special place in her heart for place-based collaborative groups and organizations focusing on conservation, stewardship, and restoration issues – her background in these fields gave her a passion for supporting these groups in meeting their goals and finding sustainable solutions to wicked problems.
Prior to working at CNREP, Alexis was the Program Director for the Society for Ecological Restoration and also worked across the Intermountain West as a Conservation Easement Specialist/Ecologist. Alexis holds a PhD in Forestry and Conservation from the University of Montana, where she focused on improving landscape-scale restoration in partnership with the US Forest Service. She currently serves on the Missoula Open Space Advisory Committee, and is always excited to expand her skills trainings and new projects. Alexis lives in Missoula with her husband and two kids; you can usually find her enjoying the outdoors, growing too many tomatoes, watching cooking reality TV, and knitting.
Rayleen Hicks, Director of Finance & Operations
rayleen.hicks@umontana.edu
Rayleen Hicks serves as the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy's Director of Finance & Operations and has responsibility for assisting the Director in the development of projects, leading faculty, research staff, students, subcontractors and others, as required, in the fiduciary administration of project development and execution with each project with our federal partners. Hicks joined the Center's team in 2018 and brings a wealth of expertise having served in various fiduciary positions at the University of Montana for over 10 years.
Shawn Johnson, Director
shawn.johnson@umontana.edu
Shawn Johnson is Director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and Co-Chair of the Center’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution. Shawn enjoys working with the Center’s talented team and partners to create spaces to reimagine and make meaningful progress on conflicts, challenges, and opportunities related to a wide range of complex, adaptive natural resource and environmental challenges. Shawn organizes and leads strategic planning and capacity building workshops for a wide variety of organizations focused on natural resource policy and management and has served as a facilitator and mediator on issues ranging from land use planning and forest management to conservation priority setting and regional collaboration.
Starting in 2009, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on regional collaboration and large landscape conservation and stewardship. The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, and governance at regional or landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions. In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale -- the Network for Landscape Conservation. Shawn is co-author of Working Across Boundaries: People, Nature, and Regions (Lincoln Institute, 2009). He also contributed to Large Landscape Conservation, A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action (Lincoln Institute, 2010) and Remarkable Beyond Borders: People and Landscapes in the Crown of the Continent (Sonoran Institute, 2010). Prior to his work at the Center, Shawn earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and spent three years as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.
Devin Landry, Partnerships and Outreach Coordinator
devin.landry@umontana.edu
Devin Landry is the Partnerships and Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. In this role, he helps to facilitate multi-partner meetings around finding collaborative solutions to large landscape stewardship, and works on increasing education and training opportunities for conservation practitioners to learn collaborative leadership skills.
For the last seven years, Devin has conducted research efforts in wildlife biology and human dimensions of wildlife management. This has brought him into some of the most pressing management issues in the West, including Greater Sage-grouse conservation and recreation impacts on wildlife populations. Prior to that, Devin has a background in religious studies, where he focused on nature-based religious movements throughout American history. Devin has always maintained a passion for understanding how people connect with nature and place to care for the land.
Devin holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MS from the University of Montana. He is also a proud alumni of the Natural Resources Conflict Resolution Program.
Nick Maya, Project Coordinator
nicholas.maya@umontana.edu
Nick Maya is a Project Coordinator at the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. In this role, he supports and helps coordinate many of the Center’s projects. He also serves as an instructor for Practicum, the capstone course of the Center’s Natural Resources Conflict Resolution graduate certificate program.
Nick’s current projects with the Center include supporting the Lolo National Forest’s land management plan revision, conducting public and stakeholder outreach and engagement on behalf of Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks for the agency’s Fish Creek recreation management strategy, and providing facilitation and public engagement training for the United States Forest Service.
Nick holds a BA in Ethnomusicology from New York University and an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. He also received a graduate certificate in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution through the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. Nick currently lives in Missoula with his partner and dog, where he enjoys fly fishing, trap shooting, and creating playlists.
Shauni Seccombe, Project Manager
shauni.seccombe@umontana.edu
Shauni Seccombe is a Project Manager at the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. In this role, she ensures the successful completion of project objectives through inclusive multi-party collaboration, effective communication, strategic planning, and creative process design. In doing so, she works to develop and advance natural resource management and policy-making processes at local, state, and regional scales.
Shauni holds a B.S. in Psychology from Clarkson University and a M.S. in Environmental Studies with dual certifications in Environmental Education and Natural Resource Conflict Resolution from the University of Montana. Shauni enjoys biking along the river trail, hiking in our National Forests, hunting on Montana’s public lands, or otherwise enjoying the outdoors with her husband, son, and bird dog.
Heather Stokes, Director of Practice
heather.stokes@umontana.edu
Heather Stokes is the Director of Practice at The Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, where she oversees the strategy, planning, and implementation of the Center’s projects and services. In this role, she also serves as lead facilitator for a number of complex projects. As a facilitator and core leadership team member at the Center, Heather designs processes and fosters relationships that engender inclusive and equitable participation and respect. She works with tribes, state and federal government agencies, NGOs, and private entities/individuals with diverse interests in the natural resource arena to help strengthen relationships, work through challenging conversations, and find solutions that benefit diverse interests and serve the common good.
Heather has 25 years of experience applying human behavior concepts to enhance the impact and effectiveness of partnerships and to advance the strategic development of private/public organizations and diverse community groups. She has worked with individuals, families, and communities living in and navigating a range of cultural, economic, and social experiences. She began her career in the behavioral health field with the quest to understand how people interact and what motivates such behavior. She began working with the CNREP team in 2019, where she found a natural intersection of utilizing her knowledge and skills from her work in the behavioral health field to fulfilling her passion in advancing natural resource issues.
Heather serves on the Board of the Montana Watershed Coordination Council. She holds certificates in Public Participation via the International Association for Public Participation (2021), Natural Resources Conflict Resolution from the University of Montana (2019), and Conservation and Environmental Sustainability through the Earth Institute at Columbia University (2010). She earned her Master’s of Science in Social Work at Columbia University in 1995.