Board of Directors

  • Mary Shaw (she/her)

    CHAIR

    Mary first came to the Swan in 2009 with her husband. She has served on a number of non-profit boards, has a lifelong career in human services, and enjoys being engaged in the community through volunteering. She has a passion for the natural environment, especially forests, wetlands, and mountains, and enjoys most human-powered outdoor activities.

  • Jessy Stevenson (she/her)

    VICE-CHAIR/SECRETARY

    Jessy grew up in the foothills of the Mission Mountains, a fifth-generation Montanan on her father’s side and a descendent of the Blackfeet Nation on her mother’s. She currently serves as the Crown Community Conservation Specialist for The Wilderness Society, where she works closely with communities, Tribes, and an array of partners to help build community-led conservation initiatives.

  • Donn Lassila (he/they)

    TREASURER

    Donn has been a part-time resident and homeowner in the Swan Valley since his childhood in 1965. Donn is gainfully employed by the Peak Trust Group. He operates two state-chartered trust companies in Alaska and Nevada, and serves as their Chief Compliance/AML officer, overseeing their regulatory, information security, and fiduciary investment risk management programs.

  • Dan Stone (he/him)

    EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AT-LARGE

    Dan and his wife built a cabin in the woods of the Swan Valley after college, where they raised a family. He retired after working 35 years at the sawmill in Seeley Lake and has served on the Swan Valley Elementary School Board and the Missoula County Open Lands Committee.

  • Rachel Feigley (she/her)

    Rachel grew up vacationing around Swan Lake. She retired from the Forest Service after 34 1/2 years of service. During her career she worked in both the technical and professional series of range management and wildlife biology. She also had the opportunity to serve as the Seeley Lake District Ranger and as the Mid-Swan project team leader.

  • Zoë Leake (she/her)

    Zoë works as a Resource Forester across Montana for Pyramid Mountain Lumber, specializing in working with private landowners to achieve their ownership objectives. Utilizing the latest silviculture as well as tried and true methods of forest management, she is passionate about making forests the healthiest and most resilient they can be from the ground up.

  • Rich Thomason (he/him)

    Rich Thomason is retired from a career in univeristy teaching, most recently at the Univeristy of Michigan. He and his family have summered in the Swan Valley for almost 50 years. As a local conservationist and land owner, he has supported SVC and its parent organizations for many years.

  • Aaron Whitten (he/him)

    Aaron and his partner, Chiaveli, moved to the Bigfork area after living in Las Vegas for years. They are the co-owners of Timbers Motel in Bigfork, and have extensive backgrounds in customer service and hospitality. Aaron’s expertise provides SVC with business insights to apply to our public service goals. He’s also a Montana Master Naturalist alumn!

  • Tina Zenzola (she/her)

    Tina comes to the SVC Board with a 28-year professional background in public health from the private, nonprofit, and governmental sectors. She also brings a life-long passion and involvement in wildness and conservation. As a volunteer in Montana and California, she helped identify wildlife corridors, document species of concern, and conduct plant ecology studies.

Emeritus

  • Russ Abolt

    Russ is a retired trade association manager in Washington D.C. Russ was highly dedicated to Swan Ecosystem Center and awarded Director Emeritus status in 2014.

  • Anne Dahl

    Anne was a founding member of Swan Ecosystem Center (that formed from the Swan Citizens’ Ad Hoc Committee and is now SVC), and served as its executive director from 1997-2013. She was awarded President Emeritus status in 2014.

  • Steve Ellis

    Steve came to Montana to serve as a Colonel for the USAF in Great Falls. He and his wife Betsey moved to the Swan Valley permanently when he retired. He’s a past volunteer firefighter with Swan Valley Emergency Services and served on the SVC board from 2004-2019.

  • Neil Meyer

    Neil came to the Swan Valley as a boy in the 1950's. He is now a retired logging contractor, yet is highly interested in sustainable forestry and sound land management. He was on the board from 1997-2019 and he and his wife Dixie received the 2016 Montana Good Neighbor Award.

Advisors

  • Kvande Anderson

    Kvande is a Swan Valley native, logging contractor, and owner of Double Ott Trucking and Timber Management.

  • Steve Bell

    Steve is originally from a small town in S uth Dakota. After graduation, he began his legal career, first as a law clerk to federal judges, and then joined a Minneapolis-based law firm, which eventually sent him to Montana, where his love of the outdoors began in earnest.

  • Jim Burchfield

    Jim has experience as both a rural sociologist and a forester. For nearly 20 years he worked for the USDA Forest Service in Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, with a three year assignment in Washington D.C. as a policy analyst in the International Program Office.

  • Larry Garlick

    Larry is retired after a 30-year career in high tech. He worked with many of the creators of the networked computer industry in Silicon Valley as an engineer and executive. His primary interests in philanthropy are watershed conservation, Special Olympics, and applying entrepreneurism to the world’s challenges through his alma mater Stanford University.

  • Chris La Tray

    Chris La Tray is a Métis writer and storyteller. Chris is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians and lives near Missoula, Montana.

  • Tim Love

    Tim served as District Ranger for the Seeley Lake Ranger District on the Lolo National Forest for nearly twenty years. Tim is currently serving as Coordinator for the Montana Forest Collaboration Network & served as an Adjunct, teaching Forest Planning at the College Of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana. Tim serves as a Public Information Officer with a Type 1 Incident Management Team.

  • Alex Metcalf

    Alex serves as a research professor at the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation. His academic interests revolve around private lands conservation—building partnerships to encourage the stewardship of working lands.

  • Pat O'Herren

    Patrick retired as the Chief Planning Officer and Director of Community and Planning Services for Missoula County in 2018. While working with Montana residents, Patrick learned the value of transparent and collaborative relationships and he helped establish multiple area community organizations. He currently chairs the Missoula County Open Lands Citizen Advisory Committee from his home in the Swan.

  • Casey Ryan

    Casey is a native Montanan and a member of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes. Casey currently serves as a hydrologist with the CSKT Natural Resources Department. He attended the University of Montana and received a B.S. in Geography and a M.S. in Forestry. Prior to accepting a position with the CSKT, Casey began his hydrology career with the United States Fish & Wildlife Service.

  • Mark Schiltz

    Mark's family has been farming in the Flathead Valley for over 100 years. He returned to Bigfork after 10 years working as a placer gold geologist, and for 20 years managed his plantation tree farm and native timber lot. Starting in 1998 Mark started working for the Montana Land Reliance as a seasonal land steward, and in 2008 he joined MLR full time as the Western Office Manager.

  • Lara Tomov

    Lara is the Director of Stories for Action, a hybrid production company that utilizes the power of storytelling to connect people to the environments they're a part of, and to one another. Lara grew up in the Bitterroot Valley, worked out of state and around the world for a decade, and loves being back home amongst the special places and communities of Montana.

  • Mark Vander Meer

    Mark Vander Meer is a principle partner with Watershed Consulting LLC, and the owner of VanWild Native Plant Nursery, all based in Missoula, MT. Mark specializes in bridging the gap between current ecologic concepts and on-the-ground application. He has been a practicing restoration ecologist, forester and soil scientist for 35 years.

  • Gary Wolfe

    Gary Wolfe is a lifelong outdoorsman and conservationist. Gary’s first professional natural resources job was as a seasonal ranger at Mount Rainier and Big Bend National Parks. He joined the staff of the fledgling Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in 1986 as the organization’s second field director, spending the following 15 years with the organization. He also later served as executive director of Vital Ground and the Cinnabar Foundation.