Driving Change Together
The Dedicated Team Behind Washington's Forest Conservation
Our Passionate Team of Environmental Advocates
Work to Preserve the Legacy Forests
of WA for generations to come.
Brel Froebe
Interim Executive Director
Brel Froebe (they/he) is an educator and community organizer living in the occupied Lummi and Nooksack territory of Bellingham. They received an MA in Urban Education and Social Justice at the University Of San Francisco, and have spent the past decade facilitating youth-led action through restorative justice, critical pedagogy, art, and outdoor education. They are also active in campaigns to decriminalize homelessness.
Brel grew up along the Middle Fork Nooksack River, and is passionate about doing what they can to protect the surrounding forests and watersheds. Their involvement with CRF started in 2021 in a successful effort to cancel the “Upper Rutsatz” timber sale above the Middle Fork Nooksack, and since then have been working with communities across Western WA to build the legacy forest protection movement.
Carly Lloyd
North Sound Region Coordinator
Carly (she/they) is from Ute land in Dillon, Colorado, where she grew up among mountains and rivers fostering her love for the outdoors. Now, they are living on Lummi and Nooksack land in Bellingham, Washington studying at Fairhaven College with a concentration in Place-Based Ecological Justice, Knowledge, and Storytelling and minors in Salish Sea Studies and Spanish. At CRF, she focuses her work on Whatcom and Snohomish counties, and loves inspiring passion for these forests and lands through community engagement and advocacy. In their free time, Carly loves exploring the mountains and rivers of western Washington and spending time with their friends.
Jim Oliver
South Sound Region Coordinator
Jim Oliver (they/he/you-know-who) grew up in the woods among beautiful Legacy forests and is proud to still live among them again today. They have been a forest advocate since 2009, working with the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon, the successful campaigns to save the Elliott State Forest in western Oregon and the McKay Community Forest in northern California, and the Tar Sands Blockade in east Texas. Jim joined CRF in 2023 to develop CRF’s volunteer surveying program and coordinate CRF efforts in Thurston, King, Pierce, Grays Harbor, and Mason Counties. In their free time they enjoy gardening, basketball, backpacking, hot springs, and backpacking to hot springs.
Nina Sarmiento
Olympic Region Coordinator
Nina (she/her) was born in New York city on Munsee Lenape land. She moved across the country after earning a bachelors of science degree in biology from SUNY Binghamton in 2016. She has always loved science education and been passionate about leaving this planet better than she found it. In New York she helped Citizens Campaign for the Environment win multiple campaigns to protect drinking water and the Hudson river watershed. In Washington she has found a home on Elwha S’klallam land. In her free time she likes to do yoga and explore the forest for native mushrooms, wildflowers, and birds. She also works as a tour guide for Magic Forest Tours, an ecotourism company she started that allows her to share her knowledge of the ecosystems on the Olympic Peninsula with visitors from all over the world. Nina coordinates CRF efforts in Jefferson and Clallam Counties, and represents CRF in the Elwha Legacy Forest Coalition.
Jamie Fiano
Communications Coordinator
With an intellect and passion shaped by a life in motion, Jamie (she/her) strives to grow her relationship with self, others, and land through curiosity, play, and an ever-evolving understanding of liberation. Her existence as a perpetual misfit serves as an open invitation to collaborate and creatively re-imagine ways in which economic, social, emotional, and ecological intersections can inform community development and resilience within a climate-changed world. Jamie’s formal education is an interdisciplinary fusion of social, political, and environmental sciences with an emphasis on Native American/Indigenous studies from her dream school, The Evergreen State College.
Our Board of Directors
Peter Goldmark
Board Chair
Peter Goldmark was the 15th Commissioner of Public Lands of Washington, and head of the Washington Department of Natural Resources from 2009 to 2017. He has a PhD in molecular biology, and has served as chair of the Okanogan County Planning Commission; director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture; and chair of the Governor's Council on Agriculture and the Environment. He was also a member of the Board of Regents to the Washington State University for ten years; served as a volunteer wildland firefighter in Washington State for over 30 years; and has owned and operated a wheat and cattle ranch in Okanogan County for more than 35 years.
Mary Jean Ryan
Board Member
Mary Jean Ryan is former Chair of the Washington State Board of Education, and a former City of Seattle executive. She served as a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Brookings Institution. She is a skilled public policy professional, experienced fundraiser, nonprofit executive, and board member. Over the past year, she has been working in cooperation with the Northwest Watershed Institute to advocate to the Washington State Legislature for increased funding for the Trust Land Transfer Program, and to permanently protect legacy forests surrounding Dabob Bay. She is a passionate conservationist and committed to working to change the policies that govern the management of Washington State forestlands.
Eirik Steinhoff
Board Member
Eirik Steinhoff has a PhD in English from the University of Chicago, and teaches or co-teaches critical and creative reading and writing (among other things) at The Evergreen State College in Olympia and in prisons in WA and NY. He was editor of the Chicago Review from 2000 to 2005 and co-editor of Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe (2015). His essays have appeared in Arcade, Counter-Signals, Floor, and Postmedieval. In 2009, his translations from Petrarch’s Rime Sparse appeared as Fourteen Sonnets (Albion Books), and in 2018 a collection of pamphlets he circulated in the vicinity of the Oakland Commune was published as A Fiery Flying Roule (Publication Studio/Station Hill). Most of his teaching and research in recent years has revolved around the question, “What needs to be the case for things to be otherwise?”