Panel Overview:
This panel will provide tips and tricks to improve your chances to attract more grant funds for restoration practices in your community. A wealthy panel will discuss the various state, federal and private funding sources out there, and how you can develop consistently winning proposals. Learn the grantsmanship turn-ons and turn-offs that determine whether you get to stay or get voted off the island. Plenty of time will be provided to ask the panel all your burning questions.
Speaker Bios:
Kristen Saacke-Blunk
Headwaters, LLC
Kristen Saacke Blunk, Headwaters LLC, serves as a field liaison to funders and strategic program developers seeking environmental outcomes, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Chesapeake Bay Stewardship-, Delaware River-, and Central Appalachian Habitat Stewardship programs. Her primary areas of focus are field based project development and assessment, strategic planning for environmental restoration, and facilitation of partnership-led water resource, habitat, and watershed management approaches engaging public-, private-, and NGO sectors. She was the founding director of the Penn State Agriculture and Environment Center, promoting science, policy, and partnerships to solve problems and resolve environmental challenges for working lands. Kristen has a BS in biology from Virginia Tech and masters in forest resource (fisheries and wildlife sciences) from Penn State. https://headwaters-llc.org/bio
Kristen’s AT trail name is “Premadonna” (misspelled by a hiking partner who happens to be an English teacher and one of her offspring) based on her expectation that others would pitch her tent and boil water for her each day. So, while neither rich nor famous, she clearly behaves as if she is when in the wilderness.
Stephanie Heidbreder
NFWF
Stephanie Heidbreder joined the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in September 2018 as the Manager of Chesapeake Programs. In that role, she manages the strategic development and implementation of the Foundation’s grantmaking programs focused on protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Previously, as the Chesapeake Field Representative for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), she planned and conducted educational and outreach activities in national parks, promoted landscape conservation, and implemented NPCA’s advocacy efforts to expand and protect parkland. Prior to NPCA Stephanie worked as the Community Education Coordinator at Casey Trees, an urban forestry non-profit in Washington, D.C., where she coordinated adult education programs and taught their Citizen Forester classes. Stephanie has experience working on youth environmental education with both the Student Conservation Association and Parks and People Foundation in Baltimore, and has conducted forest and wetland inventories for an environmental consulting firm. Additionally, Stephanie was a George Melendez Wright Climate Change Fellow, serving at the Center for Urban Ecology of the National Park Service. She earned her B.S. in Biology and Environmental Science at Rhodes College and her M.S. at the University of Maryland in their Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Sciences program. Stephanie lives outside Annapolis with her husband, young son, and mischievous rescue dog, and enjoys exploring new places, adding stamps to her National Parks passport, and getting out on the water.
Norm Goulet
Northern Virginia Regional Commission
Normand Goulet is the Director for the Northern Virginia Regional Commissions Division of Environmental and Resiliency Planning. He joined the Commission in 1991 with a focus on water resources management and is responsible for overseeing the Commissions environmental staff and programs as well as managing the Region’s Stormwater, MS4 and Chesapeake Bay Programs. On good days he actually admits to being the Chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Programs’ Urban Stormwater Workgroup.
Tom Schueler
CSN
Tom has more than 30 years experience in practical aspects of stormwater practices to protect and restore urban watersheds. He currently directs the Chesapeake Stormwater Network, a non-profit organization devoted to implementation of more sustainable stormwater practices across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Tom directs the Chesapeake Bay Stormwater Training Partnership, which provides webcasts, workshops and on-line training modules to train engineers on new practices. Tom also is active in promoting better stormwater regulations and permits in communities across the Bay. Tom founded the Center for Watershed Protection in 1992, and loves stream-walks, good scotch, and bad dogs.