The Metro Denver Nature Alliance Steering Committee is pleased to announce Dana Coelho, as our new – and first – Alliance Director!
After an extensive national search we are so excited that Dana has decided to step into this role. We all feel Dana is the perfect person to lead us through this crucial time for Metro DNA and our community. Please see Dana’s letter to us all below.
– Metro DNA Steering Committee
Dear Collaborators,
It is my sincere pleasure to have been selected for this leadership adventure, working alongside some of my most-respected and creative colleagues to continue our evolution toward a region that is a thriving place for people and nature.
Having served on the Metro DNA Steering Committee for the past two years as a representative from the US Forest Service, I am committed to activating our small but mighty organization’s potential to connect, champion, and build capacity among the region’s many capable nature-based partners.
My most recent experience with the US Forest Service has been as Urban & Community Forestry Program Manager for the Rocky Mountain Region. In that capacity I worked alongside five state coordinators from CO, WY, SD, NE, and KS to build vibrant local community forestry programs. On a broader scale, I co-led the Western Urban & Community Forestry Network, co-founded the Denver Urban Field Station, and actively participated in the National Urban Technology & Science Delivery Team. These coalitions co-created products such as the Green Infrastructure in the West publication, the Urban Forest Connections webinar series, and the Vibrant Cities Lab, all freely available resources for conservation practitioners and allied professionals.
Closer to home, I am proud and humbled to have been part of the creation and continued development of Promotores Verdes and United Cultures for Arts + Nature, two partnership programs of Americas for Conservation + the Arts born out of the Metro Denver Latino community’s interests and needs surrounding nature, health, arts, and culture.
As I reflect on what I’ve learned over the past few years and throughout my 18-year career as a sustainability student and practitioner, I am fundamentally drawn to complexity – the dynamic and interconnected nature of the social, biological, and physical world we live in – and equity – the rights that each of us have to health, prosperity, and the opportunity to engage in decisions affecting our lives and our communities. This is precisely the lens that Metro DNA brings to regional conservation.
What we are doing as the Metro Denver Nature Alliance is not new, but it is radical. Our work is motivated by the belief that a coordinated alliance can achieve more than the sum of its parts: as partners jointly consider the intersections among key regional issues, we can develop and implement more equitable, effective, and sustainable solutions.
What we are doing is also place-based, but it is not place-bound. I am immensely thankful for our colleagues working in the US and abroad to affect real change in our urban and community ecosystems, especially the pioneering work of Chicago Wilderness, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, and the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee; the successful alliance models provided by the Portland Intertwine and LA’s Amigos de los Rios; and the connectivity provided through the Urban Waters Partnership, Biophillic Cities Network, and Network for Landscape Conservation.
We are all in this together, so let’s keep moving forward, learning, and co-creating the future we most want, need, and deserve.
With humility,
Dana Coelho