Program Staff
C. Rudy Engholm |
Prior to joining the LightHawk, Rudy Engholm was the founder of Northern Wings, an environmental flying organization that merged into LightHawk in 2003. He joined LightHawk’s board at that time and served as Board President from 2005-2007. Rudy holds a commercial pilot certificate and has also been active in a number of environmental issues, including the campaign to create a new Maine Woods National Park. He has a B.S. in computer engineering and a law degree from the University of Michigan. He practiced law in the late 1970s with a Connecticut law firm, then served for ten years as Vice President and General Counsel of Creative Solutions, Inc., a Michigan-based tax and accounting software company. Rudy spent his childhood in Japan and speaks a modest amount of Japanese. |
Greg Bedinger
|
Greg has been a Volunteer Pilot with LightHawk in the Pacific Region since 2002. He is part owner of a Maule aircraft, an ATP-rated pilot and he has flown floatplanes commercially for much of his 30 year aviation career in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Much of that time was spent in his favorite plane, the De Havilland Beaver. He is an active flight instructor and has shared his passion for aviation through mentoring programs directed at both youth and adults. He is a skilled furniture builder and woodworker, a passion he has pursued alongside his aviation endeavors, continuing a long family history in both aviation and artistic arenas. A graduate of the University of Washington, he has served in many capacities with volunteer based organizations, including LightHawk’s Volunteer Pilot Committee. Greg is also a cofounder of a nonprofit environmental film production company. |
Sama Blackwell |
Sama came to LightHawk in 2004 as the Rockies Program Manager and became Director of Programs in 2007. Sama previously worked for the Four Corners States office of The Wilderness Society (TWS). At TWS, she was active in the Southern Rockies Conservation Alliance, a network of twenty-six conservation groups, and the TWS BLM Action Center Team. Prior to her work at TWS, Sama's career included a long stint in theatre, film, and television as a production manager, producer and art director. She is a graduate of Wells College, where she earned a degree in Biology/Philosophy (Environmental Ethics). She is a licensed private pilot, and lives in Boulder, Colorado. |
Bev Gabe
|
Bev joined the LightHawk team at the start of 2008. Before stepping into her role at LightHawk, Bev was part of the development team at the University of New England managing a fund-raising campaign, grant writing and planning events. She also spent a year and four days in Antarctica where, as she will confirm, it was indeed quite cold most of the time. In Seattle, Washington, she worked as a marketing copywriter and will corroborate reports that, despite being a lovely place, it does rain in Seattle for many months of the year. Bev has a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maine. |
Lee Pagni |
Lee started working with LightHawk as a partner, organizing over-flights for community leaders in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve of Central Mexico. Currently Lee works assisting with programs in Mesoamerica and the Pacific regions. In addition to his work with LightHawk, Lee works with other non-profit organizations to advance conservation via outreach and education. His work focuses on projects in the Caribbean and Latin America. One of his main projects is working with communities in the Caribbean to improve rock iguana conservation. He has an M.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Arizona, Tucson and a B.S. in Ecology from the University of California, San Diego. When he isn’t working, Lee enjoys being in the Sierra Nevada backcountry, something he has done since he was 3 months old. |
Shannon Rochelle
|
Before joining Lighthawk, Shannon worked for eight years as a plant physiologist for the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station in Colorado. She has served on the faculty of the National Outdoor Leadership School for ten years, teaching risk management, leadership, outdoor skills and environmental studies in six western states, Kenya and India. During this decade, she also served as grant writer, staffing coordinator (500+ field staff), and most recently Alaska Program and Operations Program Manager. In Alaska, she worked closely with bush pilots to arrange resupplies and evacuations via helicopters and planes landing on wheel-skis, floats and tundra tires in support of more than twenty-five simultaneous month-long wilderness expeditions all over the state. She is excited to pursue her private pilot's license. A graduate of Princeton University (BA in Biology) and Virginia Tech (MS in Forestry), Shannon has dedicated her career to helping people understand the natural world and our effects on it. |
Emilie Ryan
|
Emilie has spent most of her 20+ year career in financial management at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), an international outdoor educational nonprofit organization based in Lander, WY. While at NOLS she held a variety of financial management positions including Controller and Director of Finance and Facilities and served as one of five school wide directors. Ryan began her association with LightHawk part-time in 2001, and joined May of 2005 as CFO, overseeing the organization’s finances, budgeting, and human resources. Emilie spends the majority of her free time recreating in the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and loves being able to use her financial experience to contribute to their protection through LightHawk. |
Christine Steele
|
Before joining LightHawk, Christine worked for the Johnson Creek Watershed Council in Portland, Oregon, coordinating their outreach and advocacy efforts. Trained as a wildlife biologist, Christine has studied birds in habitats as diverse as arctic tundra, Costa Rican swamp-forest, and the forests of the Pacific Northwest. She spent time rehabilitating seabirds and raptors in California, and worked with non-releasable raptors as education birds. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Aquatic Biology from UC Santa Barbara, and a Masters in Natural Resources, Wildlife from Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA, where her thesis focused on avian disease ecology. Christine also volunteers locally, conducting bird and amphibian surveys as part of a monitoring project through Metro, Portland’s regional government. |
Laura Stone
|
Laura ran her own business from 2002 until she joined LightHawk in the summer of 2008, providing technical reports and grant writing services to nonprofits including The Nature Conservancy, Colorado Open Lands, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, Legacy Land Trust and the High Plains Environmental Center. Prior to that, she interned with the Jackson Hole Land Trust and was the first Executive Director for the Larimer Land Trust (now Legacy Land Trust) in Fort Collins. Laura has a B.A. in biology and environmental science from Colby College in Waterville, Maine and a M.S. in environmental studies from the University of Montana where she focused on international environmental policy, natural resources law and green building. Laura grew up in Boulder, Colorado returning for three summers during college to build hiking trails in Boulder’s magnificent Mountain Parks and as a seasonal backcountry park ranger after graduation. |
Kelley Tucker
|
Kelley joined LightHawk in January 2007 and lives, works, and flies a Skyhawk in New York's Adirondacks. Prior to joining LightHawk, Kelley was Vice President of the International Crane Foundation, guiding conservation efforts in 22 countries. She founded and directed the American Bird Conservancy’s pesticides and birds program and was consultant to the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She has worked on behalf of bird conservation for many years, including rehabilitating raptors and waterbirds and keeping a non-releasable Red-tailed Hawk and Saw-whet Owl for educational programs. She has bachelors’ degrees in economics and political science from Rice University and completed doctoral work in anthropology at the University of Chicago working in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. |
Armando Ubeda
|
Prior to joining LightHawk in the summer of 2008, Armando worked for the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida conducting research on movement of sharks, tag-and-recapture studies, and promoting conservation of elasmobranchs. Before that, he worked for The Nature Conservancy in Nicaragua for the Parks in Peril Project in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve supervising and planning conservation activities and working closely with indigenous communities. He also had conducted research on sea urchins, coral reef communities and manatees, and volunteered to a diverse group of projects working with endangered species from birds to marine reptiles. In 2000, Armando was granted with a Fulbright scholarship which allowed him to get his M.S. in Marine Resource Management from Oregon State University. He also has a B.S. in Marine Sciences from the University of Mobile (Latin American campus), Nicaragua. |
