Advisory Board

William deBuys

William deBuys is a prize-winning writer and conservationist with a deep relationship with the cultures and landscapes of the Southwest. He is the author of seven books, including A Great Aridness: Climate Changes and the Future of the American Southwest (Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback reprint 2013).

DeBuys has long been active in environmental affairs, and his efforts have led to the permanent protection of more than 150,000 acres of wild lands in North Carolina and the Southwest. From 2001 to 2004, under appointment by President William Clinton, he served as founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, which administers the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve under an experimental approach to the management of public lands. DeBuys earned an MA and PhD in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin.

Kathy Holian

Kathy Holian is a recently retired Santa Fe County Commissioner. During her 8 years in office (2009-2016), she championed many sustainability issues in the County, particularly with respect to food security and local agriculture. She also served on a number of regional boards and committees, including the Solid Waste Management Authority, the Buckman Direct Diversion Board; the North Central Regional Transit District Board; and the North Central New Mexico Economic Development Board, among others.

Kathy and her husband now live on 900 acres on Glorieta Mesa. They are currently involved in implementing a forest management and riparian area restoration plan that includes addressing soil erosion and water runoff, creating stock ponds for the wildlife, and forest thinning to reduce the risk of a catastrophic wildfire. They are also experimenting with restorative grazing techniques to encourage healthier grasslands.

Peter Ives

Peter N. Ives is a Santa Fe City Councilor, where he serves as Mayor Pro Tem, Chair of the Water Conservation Committee, Vice Chair of the City Business and Quality of Life Committee, and Member of the Public Utilities Committee. The City Council’s only attorney, Ives has been the Senior Counsel for the Trust for Public Lands (TPL) since 1998. He spent 15 years in private law practice prior to joining TPL. Councilor Ives also serves on the boards of the New Mexico Activities Association Foundation, Dine Peoples Legal Services, and the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts. He also serves as an officer of the Knights of Columbus for St. Francis Cathedral Council 1717. Ives has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard College and a law degree from Georgetown University.

Ellen Kemper

Ellen Kemper recently retired from more than 30 years’ consulting in Indian country, and is now a swim instructor. Kemper holds a Juris doctorate from the University of Arizona, where she focused on Indian law studies, graduating in 1983. She was licensed to practice law in New Mexico, Arizona, Washington DC, and Maryland. Her consultancy practice consisted of policy development, curriculum design and training, grant writing, and project implementation on a variety of topics, including an equine assisted learning project teaching life skills to youth. Ellen has a knack for making legalese understandable for those without legal training. She’s been a member of numerous environmental organizations over the decades. She’s also a founding member of The Commons, one of the first co-housing communities in the U.S.

Les Lakind

Leslie Lakind is retired from his private practice of dentistry, which he began in 1979, a practice that earned the “Best Dental Practice in Santa Fe” designation during its last four years. Lakind has always been interested in public service and taught in Harlem for several years after graduating from Rutgers University with a degree in psychology. After completing his training at Temple Dental School he worked at La Clinica de la Gente, a Public Heath Clinic in Agua Fria Village, near Santa Fe. He now devotes much of his time to climate and related issues.

Stuart Pimm

Stuart Pimm is the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He studies present day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. Pimm wrote the acclaimed assessment of the human impact to the planet, The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth, which was published by McGraw-Hill in 2001. His commitment to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. Pimm directs SavingSpecies, a 501c3 non-profit that uses funds from carbon emissions offsets to fund local conservation groups to restore degraded lands in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity.

Bill Stine

Bill Stine is a mechanical engineer who has devoted his career to developing innovative solutions to environmental problems. He is the author of a major engineering textbook, Solar Energy Fundamentals and Design (John Wiley, 1985). He has consulted on many solar energy projects for clients such as Georgia Power and Sandia National Laboratories, and worked on various solar energy research projects in Spain, Germany, and Japan.

In the 90s Stine worked with a team of faculty at Cal Poly to develop a university-wide academic program in regenerative (sustainability) studies, supported by a major grant from The Kellogg Foundation. In this hands-on program, students lived and worked in a specially designed on-campus facility, with the goal of producing and conserving their own energy and food, recycling water and waste, and developing techniques and skills to live and work together in a sustainable manner. Stine holds a PhD and an MBA, and is Professor Emeritus at California State Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo and Pomona), as well as a Fellow of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

Jill Cooper Udall

Jill Cooper Udall is an educator, lawyer, former Deputy Attorney General for the State of New Mexico, long-time arts advocate, and former Officer of Cultural Affairs for the State of New Mexico. She was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Ms. Udall also sits on the Board of Visitors and Governors for St. John’s College and the Boards of Directors for the Washington National Opera, Ford’s Theatre, Santa Fe Conservation Trust, SITE Santa Fe, Southwest Care Center, and the Meridian International Center.

She has been engaged as a consultant on museum issues for the President’s Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States and for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, where, among other things, she worked with the State Department’s Arts in Embassies Program to commission work by Native American artists to hang in diplomatic residences around the world. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and Columbia University Law School.

Alan Webber

Alan Webber current mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a business journalist and entrepreneur who has been bringing his progressive ideas to his adopted state. In 1995 Webber co-founded the technology business magazine Fast Company, the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history and winner of two National Magazine Awards. He was named Adweek‘s Editor of the Year in 1999, along with co-founding editor William Taylor.

In 2000 Fast Company was sold for the second largest amount of any magazine in U.S. history (at the time). Before founding Fast Company, Webber was for five years the managing editor and editorial director of the Harvard Business Review. During his tenure, HBR was twice a finalist for National Magazine awards. Earlier in his career he served as editorial page editor for the Willamette Week, where he received an Oregon State Newspaper Publisher’s Association Award for news and feature writing.