Our Team
John Nordgren
Managing Director
Bainbridge Island, WA
John has spent his career working at the intersection of science and policy and in pursuit of durable solutions that bring people and nature together for the mutual benefit of both. John has expertise in conservation science, policy, and climate change adaptation. He is a nationally recognized leader and champion for the climate adaptation and resilience field.
John developed and launched the Climate Resilience Fund (CRF) in 2017 and currently serves as its Managing Director. John is also Principal of Foresight Partners, Inc., a consultancy focused in part on helping foundations more effectively incorporate climate considerations into their grantmaking programs and the work of their grantees. He previously served as Senior Advisor, Climate Change (2015) for the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation and as Senior Program Officer (2009-2014) for Kresge’s Environment Program, where he developed and implemented Kresge’s strategies for advancing the field of climate change adaptation, facilitating over $60M in investments over a seven-year tenure.
John has served on the National Academy of Sciences Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate (BASC) and was a founding member of the Board of Directors for EcoAdapt, Inc. He currently serves as board member and treasurer for the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. He has also served for ten years as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Climate Adaptation Fund, a project of the Doris Duke Foundation focused on wildlife habitat conservation in a changing climate, which he helped to develop.
Prior to joining Kresge, John was Program Officer for the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in Boston, where he led the Foundation’s Northeastern Landscape Conservation Program and developed and led Kendall’s Climate Adaptation Program (2006-08). He was previously Director of Programs for the Massachusetts-based Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and worked in the Legislative Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. John earned his B.A. in public policy from The American University in Washington, D.C. and M. A. in environmental policy from Tufts University in Medford, MA. John was raised in NJ and called New England home for many years, but currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family with whom he spends as much time as possible hiking, kayaking and growing vegetables.
Darren Long
Associate Director
Washington, D.C.
Darren has worked as a grantmaker and non-profit executive for the past 21 years. He specializes in building investment strategies for impacting public policy, increasing sustainability, and creating social, economic and ecological resilience to climate change. Darren has a long track record investing in communications strategies to leverage resources, build constituencies, and increase social ROI. As a practicing organic farmer and livestock grower, he brings the principles of ethical stewardship, leadership, and long-term sustainability to his work in the agricultural sector, as well. Previously, Darren served as Global Lead and Director for Climate Change Adaptation and as Managing Director of the Climate Adaptation Fund at the Wildlife Conservation Society. There he was responsible for all management, strategic communications and grantmaking activities for a program which has invested more than $15 million to support nonprofit conservation organizations, and administered a portfolio of science, planning and applied conservation across more than 50 countries. He holds a finance degree from The George Washington University and a Masters of Public Administration from Montana State University. Darren currently serves as a board member of the Catoctin Land Trust.
Liz Tully
Program Officer, Climate Smart Communities Initiative
Washington, D.C.
Liz has more than 15 years of work experience monitoring, and resourcing community-led conservation projects around the world and throughout the US. Prior to joining the Climate Resilience Fund, Liz was the Director of the WCS Climate Adaptation Fund (CAF), a multimillion-dollar regranting program. Over 8 years, Liz managed CAF’s grantmaking and programmatic priorities as they evolved from piloting innovative and novel demonstrations of climate-adapted conservation at the site level, to catalyzing a field of practice in adaptation, to supporting grant partners to mainstream adaptation approaches. Liz previously served as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Officer at the United Nations Foundation (UNF) where she managed a framework tying actions to program strategy and tracking progress towards impact goals. Prior to joining UNF, Liz worked at Rare tracking and monitoring the progress and quality of all of Rare’s world-wide conservation projects through centralized reporting tools, global standards and indicators of impact and conducting periodic site evaluations. Liz also worked at the World Resources Institute (WRI) piloting a new scoring system to evaluate conservation project proposals seeking funding from USDA-NRCS. Liz has conducted field research with the Center for Tropical Agriculture Research (CATIE) studying the impact of payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs on local dairy farms and ecosystems in Costa Rica, and with Cornell University where she studied with the indigenous Kayapo community of Gorotire to learn from their sustainable management of non-timber forest products on protected land. Liz earned a Master’s degree in International Affairs from American University and a Master’s degree in Natural Resources Management and Sustainable Development from the United Nations University for Peace & Conflict Studies. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Conservation Biology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Kayla Calkins
Program Officer, Wildfire Resilience Funders
Portland, OR
Kayla has built her career as a translator in complex sectors, integrating perspectives across stakeholders and relating to people’s everyday lives. She is a marketer, researcher, and community facilitator with 15 years of experience at Fortune 50 companies, startups, and nonprofits. Her focus on adaptation and resilience grew from her background in insurance leadership, where she witnessed the material effects of climate change on increasing extreme weather. She served on State Farm’s philanthropic Youth Advisory Board, led design thinking research at their IDEO-designed community space, and developed their context-based insurance tech brands and ESG efforts. Her work in financial education and debt relief heightened her awareness of the connection between social and climate injustices related to housing and health. After moving back to the Pacific Northwest, Kayla’s interest in wildfire intensified with the 2020 Labor Day Fires. She shifted her attention to the public sector and received her Master’s in Public Administration (2024) from Harvard Kennedy School, concentrating on climate policy and social impact strategy. As a Climatebase Fellow, she has worked with BurnBot, The Environmental Defense Fund, and FireUp, while conducting independent research to map strategies for mitigating risk and increasing resilience in a fiery future. Kayla believes that strengthening our bonds with each other and nature unlocks our ability to co-create for collective well-being. You can often find her gardening, dyeing natural fibers, and hosting gatherings to cultivate levity and joy as fuel for the big work of climate justice.
Douglas Meyer
Director of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
Saratoga Springs, NY
Douglas is a communications and engagement specialist who for more than 20 years has helped nonprofit and philanthropic organizations identify and develop inclusive and effective ways to engage their audiences and increase their impact. Through his experience as an independent consultant, as well as his many years as a principal at Bernuth & Williamson, he has developed a depth of knowledge on a range of issues related to strategic planning, nonprofit management, and project evaluation; and assisted organizations and foundations working on an array on topics at the intersection of human health, environmental sustainability, and economic development. Apart from his work with CRF, he is also coordinating an ambitious climate change campaign for a national network of aquariums known as the Aquarium Conservation Partnership. Prior to starting his career as a consultant, Douglas worked in film and television production in Hollywood, and was on staff at The Nature Conservancy, where he managed media relations for the organization’s international programs and led outreach efforts for its priority initiatives. Douglas has been a featured speaker at various national and international conferences, a contributor to National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, an instructor in nonprofit marketing at Skidmore College, and a board member at a rare cancer research fund, ACCRF. Fluent in Spanish and conversant in Portuguese, Douglas graduated with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and Spanish from Indiana University, and later received a master’s degree with honors from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Haley R. Pope
Consultant, TerraLens LLC
Port Angeles, WA
Haley has worked with non-profits and small businesses since 2016 to provide digital media and content management, project management and support, content writing, photography, and most recently, website development and maintenance. She helps her clients maintain greater digital organization, program efficiency and effectiveness, and engagement with customers, partners, and donors over the long-term. In addition to CRF where she offers administrative and program support, Haley helps manage, curate content, and update EcoAdapt’s comprehensive climate adaptation resource database and website, the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) and is on the governing council for the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI). She has also worked with nine chapters of The Nature Conservancy to set up digital asset management (DAM) systems for images used for marketing and communications and has been a contributing photographer and writer to the North American Nature Photography Association. Her writing has also been featured in the Save Our Seas Foundation magazine. During her years living in Malaysia, Chile, and South Africa, Haley’s passion for travel, community service, and a desire to study and protect nature matured. She has earned a M.S. in zoology, studying marine ecology, from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and a B.A. in biology from Elon University. Outside of work, Haley enjoys wildlife photography, hiking in the mountains, surfing and diving along Washington’s rocky coast, playing the piano, and learning new languages.
Advisory Board
Kate Barnes
Program Officer, The MacArthur Foundation
Chicago, IL
Kate joined The MacArthur Foundation in 2007. Previously, she worked in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago supporting research on marine and aquatic ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. Through a fellowship with the Department of Energy, Kate worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration evaluating and responding to threats to the US Great Lakes. As a graduate student, she worked with Oceana to develop and advocate science-based policies for reducing fisheries by-catch and protecting threatened marine species. Kate holds a master’s degree in Environmental Management from Duke University, and a bachelor of arts in Biological Science from Smith College.
Joel Clement
Senior Program Officer, The Lemelson Foundation
Wayne, ME
Joel Clement is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In his role, Mr. Clement works to expose political interference in science from the Trump administration and Congress, fight attacks on federal science, and promote public understanding of the importance of independent science in policymaking. Mr. Clement is also the public face of the UCS Science Protection Project, through which federal scientists may confidentially report political interference in government science. Before joining UCS, Mr. Clement served as director of the Office of Policy Analysis within the US Department of the Interior (DOI), working to help Native Alaskan communities in danger of losing their lands and livelihoods because of climate change. Under Secretary Ryan Zinke, Mr. Clement and dozens of his colleagues were reassigned to different DOI positions for which they were frequently ill-suited; Mr. Clement was no longer able to work on climate policy to benefit vulnerable populations. Mr. Clement first blew the whistle on his politically motivated reassignment in The Washington Post, and later resigned. Mr. Clement earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, and a Master of Environmental Studies degree from The Evergreen State College. He has been quoted in Bloomberg, HuffPost, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, NPR, The New York Times, Outside Magazine, and The Washington Post, and has appeared on CBS, CNN, Democracy Now!, Mic, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, NBC, and the PBS NewsHour.
Sacha Spector
Director, Environment, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
New York, NY
Sacha Spector is the program director for the environment at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, where he oversees all environmental conservation grant-making of the foundation. Previously, Spector was director of conservation science at Scenic Hudson, leading the group’s efforts on climate change, land conservation planning and natural resource stewardship. There, he developed sea level rise and climate change adaptation initiatives in close cooperation with communities and state agencies while prioritizing land acquisitions and ecological restoration projects focused on the region’s most biologically important sites. Spector also managed the invertebrate conservation program at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History and, prior to that, worked as a field trainer and researcher at Conservation International in Washington, D.C. Spector maintains positions as an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and as a visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He has earned recognition for his conservation expertise through grants and awards from NASA, National Science Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London. Spector has also authored and/or co-authored more than 30 research papers, books and articles. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in ecology from the University of Connecticut and his Bachelor of Science degree in environmental biology from Yale University.