Our People
Michelle Uberuaga
Outgoing Executive Director
Michelle moved to Montana to work on a research crew in Yellowstone National Park. She now lives in Livingston and works as a community organizer, mother, and an environmental attorney. She grew up in Mount Rainier National Park, where she learned that children should be allowed limitless opportunities to wander aimlessly in the woods.
In March of 2024 after almost a decade of service and leadership at PCEC, Michelle Uberuaga has accepted a new role as the Senior Program Manager for Yellowstone at the National Parks Conservation Association.
Erica Lighthiser
Interim Executive Director
Erica grew up along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies and moved north to attend graduate school at Montana State. She enjoys spending time with family, friends and connecting with nature. Her interests include exploring gentler ways of living and travel, whether touring the West with her family on bicycles, building an energy-efficient solar powered home, and living 'tiny' in a trailer while exploring parks and public lands throughout the country. Erica has spent hours in conversation with neighbors working to find common ground to safeguard this wild and special place.
At PCEC, Erica collaborates with Max on organizational management and fundraising, while guiding strategic direction of our healthy landscapes, thriving communities and conservation leadership programs.
Max Hjortsberg
Conservation Director
Max grew up in Paradise Valley and has called Park County home for most of his life. He currently lives in Livingston with his family. He is an avid angler and enjoys spending much of his time outdoors in the mountains or on the river. Max is passionate about protecting the environment and carrying out conservation minded projects that benefit everyone who calls Park County home. Max is a member of the Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group and serves on the Lincoln School Foundation Board.
At PCEC, Max collaborates with Erica on organizational management and fundraising. He lends his considerable technical expertise to all of our conservation initiatives and leads our water and wildlife programs.
Robin Addicott
Operations Director
Robin grew up in Kalispell. She ventured to the Midwest after college, and later relocated to the Pacific Northwest for work, where she met her husband. In 2012, they moved to Livingston to raise their two daughters. She loves nothing more than being on the water with her family and their dogs. Robin brings a strong background in sales and marketing to PCEC; her enthusiasm for the outdoors informs her dedication to preserving this beautiful place.
Robin directs organizational operations and leads PCEC’s community and youth leadership programs.
Johnathan Hettinger
Communications Director
Johnathan moved to Livingston from Central Illinois in 2018, eager to learn and write more about the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. He worked for a year for the Enterprise and continues to work as a freelance journalist. Johnathan is passionate about recognizing the need to give space to wildlife in Yellowstone’s Northern Gateway, and serves on Livingston’s City Conservation Board. He also is enthusiastic about planning for Park County’s future, whether that means climate change or a growing population.
Johnathan contributes his considerable expertise in research and communications to all of PCEC’s conservation initiatives, especially community planning and wildlife programs.
Karrie Kahle
Business and Community Partnerships Director
Karrie was a PCEC Janet Spirey Spirit Community Volunteer Award winner and worked as the Community Director of the Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition. She honed her community organizing skills working to protect our community from two gold mines with the passage of the Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act. Volunteer work really can lead to a new career! Karrie came out west after graduating from Central Michigan University in 1998 to work in Yellowstone National Park, while moving away after a few seasons she was called back to this incredible place to live full time in 2009. Her love for the landscape, the wildlife and this community runs deep. When Karrie is not working she can be found in the kitchen cooking for family and friends or hanging out on the river with her partner Scott and their pup Cache.
Karrie helps develop and maintain PCEC’s many relationships with community organizations and local businesses.
Sarah Stands
Community Resiliency Director
You could almost say that Sarah was born to do this work. Her father, Tom Shands, was the vice-president of the PCEC board in the 1990s. While leafing through some old newsletters in the office Sarah came across a photo of her younger-self from in the 1997 issue illustrating an article entitled “Planning for the Future.” Little did we know that plan would be multigenerational! With Sarah’s passion for PCEC’s vision around community planning, supporting this work only makes sense.
Sarah works under the umbrella of community and climate resilience and brings a background in international sustainability to her home town for current and future generations.
Bethany allen
Wild Habitat Director
Bethany works closely with Park County community partners to establish a countywide noxious weed treatment efficacy monitoring program. In addition to this field research, she leads native habitat and invasive weeds education initiatives. Bethany previously worked with the Wilderness Institute where she assisted USFS and BLM managers with monitoring needs across the state of Montana while guiding and teaching groups of volunteers to collect data in the backcountry. Bethany finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Montana in resource conservation with a focus on ecological restoration. During this time she conducted research on the efficacy of Clark Fork River restoration efforts, Lolo Peak post-fire forest recovery, and old growth forest treatment efficacy in the Scapegoat Wilderness.
Bethany utilizes her background in field research and outdoor education to help connect community members to their resources and teach the significance of scientific monitoring methods in the face of continuing environmental pressures.
Joanna Massier
Community organizer — Climate resilience
Joanna is an Iowa native and 2023 University of Iowa graduate with a degree in environmental policy and creative writing. Her passion for environmental justice and community building drew her to serve with Americorps and Park County Environmental Council. In her free time, she enjoys baking and reading.
Board of Directors
Wendy Riley
President
Wendy wishes she had been born in Montana but is grateful she discovered this beautiful place with time to enjoy it and help make a difference to preserve it for generations to come. She most recently co-led the effort to prevent an asphalt plant and gravel pit from being built and operated south of Emigrant, along the gateway to Yellowstone Park.
Wendy brings to PCEC more than 25 years of experience in human resource management and organizational development and has an M.A. in Organizational Leadership. She has worked with a variety of companies and industries, both for- and not-for-profit, most recently for Microsoft Corporation where she managed global change initiatives and helped improve leadership team effectiveness.
Wendy and her husband have resided in Paradise Valley full-time since 2014, after purchasing their property in 2001, and enjoy traveling, camping, fly-fishing, skiing, and hiking.
Seabring Davis
Vice President
Seabring is a lifestyle journalist who writes about what she loves: food, art, travel and interesting people. Originally from Hawaii, a road trip brought her through Bozeman in 1990, and Montana has been home ever since.
She is the former editor in chief of Big Sky Journal and editor emeritus of Western Art & Architecture magazines. Her articles have been published in Mountain Living; True West Magazine; VIA AAA Mountainwest; Postcards; Montana Quarterly; and Montana Living. SA Taste of Montana: Favorite Recipes from Big Sky Country and A Montana Table, Recipes from Chico Hot Springs Resort. She has also written and edited three other books on regional travel and architecture. Her first short story was published in Elk River Books Reader (Bangtail Press 2013).
Lucinda Reinold
Treasurer
Lucinda has long been a supporter of conservation and environmental causes and is passionate about working to help preserve the land, water, wildlife and rural character of Park County. She moved to Paradise Valley after a career with Northern Trust in San Francisco, where she most recently managed the Wealth Advisory function.
Over the course of 25-plus years, Lucinda has served on numerous not-for-profit boards, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, University of California Press Foundation, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Oxbow School and the Capp Street Project.
Kelly Niles
Secretary
A outdoors lover from birth, Kelly moved from Northern California to Bozeman in 1996 to hike, ski, fish and start her own business, a private learning center. More than a decade later, Kelly sold her business and moved to the Shields Valley to start a small farm where she raised her 2 children and a menagerie of animals.
Exploring the connections between ecology and food systems, Kelly recently earned her Permaculture Design Certificate with training in Advanced Social Justice. A true believer that nature is important for the well being of all, Kelly is dedicated to preserving wild places with and for the local communities.
KAren Cochran
Board Member
Karen and her husband first came to Park County in 1998 and realizing its beauty, continued to return each summer. In 2007, they purchased property on Rock Creek Road, in the Tom Miner area, and built their home where we lived until 2019, when they moved to Jumping Rainbow Ranch. Karen and her husband both enjoy hiking, fly-fishing, horseback riding and studying the geology and the history of the area.
Karen retired from a 20-year career as a Psychotherapist in Nashville, after working in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Office. Additionally, Karen has worked as a community and political organizer and volunteered at not-for-profits on social justice and environmental issues.
Currently, Karen’s interests are in land planning and zoning for Park County which is essential in order to maintain this the unique and rare eco-system and biodiversity. Karen has volunteered locally for Northern Plains Resource Council, Aspen House on the Human Trafficking Task Force and Western Sustainability Exchange as a Board member.
Joseph Dorn
Board Member
Joe comes to the board with more than 40 years of experience as a lawyer in Washington, DC. From 1994 until his retirement in early 2016, Joe was a partner with King & Spalding, where he specialized in international trade disputes and other complex litigation.
Joe has been coming to Park County since the 1980s to fish and hike and escape the stress of working in the nation’s capital. He acquired land in Paradise Valley in 2008 and built a house in 2010 that faces Emigrant Peak. In retirement, Joe spends much of the year fishing, hiking, skiing, and enjoying the people and wildlife of Park County. He greatly appreciates and wants to conserve all of the natural beauty that this special place has to offer.
Joe serves on the boards of the University of North Carolina Arts and Sciences Foundation and the Georgia Tennis Foundation, and he supports several environmental organizations in Montana and elsewhere.
John Heidke
Board Member
John grew up in a small town in Wisconsin with a rich introduction to conservation guided by the works of fellow Badger, Aldo Leopold, as well as hunting with his father. It was idyllic. After getting his undergraduate and master’s degrees in Wisconsin and his doctorate in policy and leadership at Ohio State University, John taught at the University of Michigan, and then began a career consulting with organizations and their leaders around the world.
After coming to visit a childhood friend in Paradise Valley nearly thirty years ago, John and his late wife, Barbara Hays, realized there may be those who can live without wild things, but they were not of that group. And they thought about settling in Montana, while still traveling across every continent except Antarctica. John, a year-round resident of Park County, has actively contributed his time and talent serving and volunteering, including six years on the Park County Planning Board – three years as chair, and at Livingston HealthCare. His interests on the PCEC Board include finding ways to bring people with differing views together to consider ways of finding solutions that sustain and steward this beautiful Yellowstone ecosystem we live in and love for generations to come.
Shiloh Hernandez
Board Member
Shiloh grew up in the wilds of rural Montana. After kicking around Sanders County, Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, and some places farther afield, Shiloh moved with his family to Park County in 2021. Shiloh is an attorney with Earthjustice, focusing on combatting climate change.
Outside of work, Shiloh’s interests are civic engagement, getting to know neighbors, and walking or running as many miles of trail in the Absaroka and Crazy Mountains as possible.
Nelson King
Board Member
Nelson has been a writer and journalist for more than 30 years, most of that time following the ups and down of science and technology in columns, blogs, articles, and books. Meanwhile, he developed software for state environmental laboratories. Prior to that, 20 years were more than occupied by professional theater.
Nelson has been a PCEC board member for 11 years, 10 of those as president of the board.
Sandra lambert
Advisor
Sandra grew up in Kansas City and earning degrees at the University of Missouri, she began a career of college teaching and then being an author’s editor. After moving West, a forest fire destroyed her family’s home and they moved to Jackson Hole, where she taught skiing and kayaking, rode horses, and climbed. She has served on many boards including for Mountain Journal and led the capital campaign for a shelter for abused women and children. She lives in Livingston, when not fishing she monitors meetings of the Park County Commission and Planning Board.
Dan Sullivan
Advisor
Dan and his family have been living and working in Park County for 20 years. They live here to experience the real natural world, one like no other. Dan is a fierce advocate for wild things and places. He has been a voice for the grizzly bear since the day they met nearly 40 years ago in the backcountry near Glacier National Park and many times since in Yellowstone. He also counts among his friends here old folks, children and their pets.
Tom Murphy
Board Member Emeritus
Tom uses his photography to illustrate his passion for the remaining wild places on our earth. Yellowstone National Park’s wildlife and landscapes are the special focus of Tom’s work. A talented naturalist and gifted lecturer, Tom has traveled the United States presenting the wonders of nature captured in his photographic slide shows. Tom has been a member of the PCEC board for more than two decades, and his photography is featured throughout our website.