What our customers say...
"Thanks for being a helpful sounding board, and for making such useful suggestions later with me, after the session. Wow, that was really helpful. It was also great just to share what I have been grappling with, with a person who understands the topic and has such relevant insights. Thank you!"
"Thanks for the phone call last week to check in. I so appreciate your time and help with this project and believe we will be very successful in our message. I can't wait to start making phone calls. I spoke with a Board member for over an hour on Thursday hitting on the same issues we spoke about in making contact with those who don't know us as well as our volunteer/members."
"It's my first day back in the saddle - and before I did anything else I wanted to send you a quick note to say thank you. I hugely appreciate your taking the time to listen, to provide such valuable counsel and to do all with such kindness and consideration. You made some good, solid suggestions that are helping me address how I show up and address events as they unfold. Thank you, it's made a difference, and I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am as to how you're helping both myself on a personal level and the organization on a larger level. We are very blessed to have your guidance."
TREC Staff
We are activists helping activists with the business of activism.
Dyan Oldenburg, Executive Director
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
Megan Seibel, Associate Director
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Phone: (303) 284-6968
Jeff DeBonis, Senior Associate
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
David Thomson, Senior Associate
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Phone: (604) 987-3667
Amy Bianco, Evaluation/Publication Administrator
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
Don Elder, Senior Associate
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Phone: (503) 984-3025
James (Kim) Gilliam, Senior Associate
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Phone: (434) 823-5437
Cyndi Harris, TREC Associate
Phone: (505) 989-9703
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Elizabeth Hospodarsky, Senior Associate
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Phone: (520) 299-1903
Bonney Hughes, Administrative/Program Assistant
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
Linda Schaeff, TREC Associate
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
Richard Schaeff, TREC Associate
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Phone: (505) 986-8400
Dan Schwab, Senior Associate
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Phone: (510) 685-0722
Dyan
Oldenburg founded Training Resources for the Environmental Community
(TREC) in 1997. As executive director, she assists in developing and
directing TREC’s programs and provides services to TREC clients. She
has worked on numerous legislative, electoral and issue campaigns since
1979. Dyan ably assists environmental nonprofits in growing their leaders,
boards and organizations. Her love of the wild people and the wild places
and critters that they’ve dedicated their lives to saving is what keeps
her going. She is dedicated to helping groups meet their missions and
manage change. Her straw bale, solar house at the end of the road is
her refuge. She can often be seen riding one of her horses in the back
country of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Northern New Mexico with
her dog Bella running along side her. She is a graduate of Antioch College
with a degree in political science, management and community service.
Megan
Seibel, Associate Director, manages TREC’s Organizational Effectiveness Programs. In this capacity, she brings her
strategic thinking and considerable management skills and experience to the oversight of our fundraising assistance, financial management
and human resource management programs. Megan also supervises
TREC's evaluation and applied research programs, as well as TREC's
internal operations. In addition, she serves as TREC's Director of
Finance. Megan brings a wealth of grassroots nonprofit experience,
with over 25 years working as a fundraiser, executive director, and
in other senior management positions. She provides specialized
training, consulting and coaching in strategic financial management.
Megan and her family live in Denver, CO.
Jeff DeBonis, Senior Associate,
builds leadership and effectiveness within emerging resource
protection organizations in the West. For the past ten years he has
provided capacity building services, including leadership
development, coaching, strategic planning, campaign and coalition
development and other critical services to the next generation of
activists. Jeff has had a distinguished 35-year career dedicated to
protecting forests and wild lands in North, Central and South
America. In 1989, he founded and was the Director the Association of
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (AFSEEE), and in
1992 he founded and directed Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER), an expanded national organization of public
employees of numerous environmental agencies that work to ensure the
integrity and public accountability of their agencies. He lives with
with wife and son in Hood River,Oregon, and is currently on leave from TREC
until this fall.
David
Thomson, Senior Associate, has 20 years experience
working as a leader, trainer, and consultant in both the private and
public sector. His specialties include leadership development,
governance, coaching, strategic planning, change management and team
development. David spent eight years working with Outward Bound,
where he was in a senior management role. David works with
Organizational Effectiveness Program clients, Leadership Development
Program clients and provides Customized Training and Consulting
services on a range of topics, including strategic planning and
board development. He is the National Board
Past-President of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. David
holds a Master of Science in Organization Development from
Pepperdine and is a certified coach through the Coaches Training
Institute.
Amy Bianco,
Evaluation/Publication Administrator,
oversees the evaluations and survey process for TREC in the
Operations office. She also works in graphic design and editing to
create TREC's reports. A lifelong lover of the outdoors, Amy has
over 25 years experience in many varied aspects of administration,
for both non-profit and for-profit ventures. She feels fortunate to
have worked in free-form radio, first as program director at the
University of California, Santa Cruz where she graduated with a
degree in English and Italian Literature, then on to the
"semi-legendary" KFAT Radio in the Bay Area of California. She lives in Santa Fe
with her husband and beloved Airedale Terrier, Rosa.
Don Elder, Senior Associate, has served conservation organizations
in a variety of capacities over the past 25 years. Currently, he is
Director of Individual Giving for River Network, a national
conservation organization, based in Portland, Oregon, that provides
technical, organizational, fundraising and networking support for
river and watershed groups across the United States. His prior roles
include Director of Major Gifts for Western Rivers Conservancy,
President of River Network, Program Director for River Network,
Development Director for The Nature Conservancy of Alabama, and
founding Executive Director of the Cahaba River Society. Don enjoys
backpacking, fly fishing, outdoor cooking, jogging, and tennis.
James
(Kim) Gilliam, Senior Associate, has been involved in the creation
and direction of dynamic fundraising efforts for more than two decades.
After several years of working as a VISTA volunteer in various community
organizing roles in North Dakota, from 1988-2002 he was the Chief Development
Officer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, based in Charlottesville,
Virginia. During his fourteen year tenure the organization grew from
a $500,000 to a $5 million annual budget. He was primarily responsible
for building a nationally recognized individual major gifts program
that grew to generate fifty percent of the organization’s annual budget.
He also spearheaded the organization’s successful $15.5 million Campaign
for the Environmental Future of the South from 1997-2000.
Since 2003, he has managed a full time consulting practice working with a national client base in developing fundraising plans and major gift and capital campaign efforts, as well as doing extensive training in environmental fundraising throughout the country. In addition to his training and coaching role with TREC, he also serves as a lead fundraising consultant to grantees of the French American Charitable Trust in San Francisco, a foundation supporting organizations working on root causes of poverty and inequity.
Cyndi
Harris, Senior Associate, has over 16 years of hands-on experience in organization and group development consulting, coaching and training in non-profit and for-profit organizations. Her work with non-profits has included leadership and board development, strategic planning, culture alignment with strategy, organizational change and transition, diversity and inclusion, team and group development and organizational assessment processes. She served as Senior Consultant for social justice non-profits for a philanthropic organization. At Antioch New England Graduate School Environmental Studies PhD program, her studies were focused on the development of resilient environmental leaders. She has a deep passion and focus on fostering resilience at individual, group, and organizational levels. Cyndi is a certified professional coach, a member of National Training Laboratory’s Institute for Applied Behavioral Science and has a MS in Human and Organizational Development from American University and a MS in Medical Microbiology. Prior to her consulting work, Cyndi was the Director of Technical Services for bioMerieux Vitek, Inc.
Elizabeth
Hospodarsky, Senior Associate, grew up exploring wild places
like the Cascade Mountain Range and the Appalachian Trail with her mountaineer
father. Though her pack was nearly as big as she was, she developed
a deep passion for wilderness and biodiversity. Elizabeth brings this
passion into her work at TREC by helping clients with organizational
development, fundraising planning,
strategies, donor development and by approaching the health and
effectiveness of organizations holistically. Elizabeth has been a
non-profit professional since 1995 and has successfully fulfilled
the roles of founder, board member, Development Director, and
Executive Director for organizations working to care for our earth
and the plants and animals living on it.
Bonney
Hughes, TREC's Administrative/Program Assistant, works in
the TREC Operations office. She has an M.S. in Environmental
Toxicology, has conducted OSHA inspections, and wrote
and spoke on water quality regulations and watershed protection for
the New Mexico Environment Department for 10 years. She has done a variety
of writing, editing, and administrative work for Santa Fe nonprofits
including her assistant director position with Eldorado Children's Theatre
and Teen Players. A resident of Santa Fe, Bonney enjoys singing and spending time with her husband
and two sons.
Linda
Schaeff, Senior Associate, joins the TREC team part time as she transitions out
of her current position as founder and CEO of WolfCreek Partners, an
educational, consulting and training group focused on the
transformation of health care systems in the U.S. Prior to forming
WolfCReek Partners, Linda worked closely with Larry Wilson to
develop the Playing to Win organizational change model for Pecos
River Learning Centers where she was senior faculty, consultant and
executive Vice President.
As Playing to Win curriculum developed, it became the foundation for
addressing critical culture issues within national and international
organizations as they experienced mergers, acquisitions, rapid
expansion and unprecedented change. In addition to extensive work in
organizational and leadership development, Linda spent 10 years as
the director of counseling at Punahou School in Hawaii and five
years working for the U.S. military, in Hawaii, where she developed
a prevention based family mental health center that was adopted at
military bases throughout the world. She and her husband Richard
Schaeff currently live in Ashland, Oregon where she divides her time
between work, family and the development and maintenance of their
85-acre sustainable agriculture organic farm.
Richard
Schaeff, Senior Associate, was an executive of Pecos River Learning Centers, a division of Aon Consulting, for 13 years. With a background in educational psychology, he has developed exceptional skills in adult learning strategies. Although the majority of his work focuses on large group intervention and facilitation, his passion is for one on one coaching and the long-term development of small executive groups. His clients have included Pillsbury, Norwest Bank, Dupont, General Motors, Kaiser Permenente Health Systems, Patagonia and Northwest Airlines.
In 2000, Richard took a break from corporate consulting to earn his degree in biology, help raise his grandson, Sean, and focus on building his organic farm business.
Richard assists executive groups of all kinds in advancing their abilities to grow and develop themselves, their employees, and their organizations. Using a series of cognitive models, experiential activities and communications skills and tools, he facilitates the creation of sustainable solutions to chronic problems as well as the creation of an optimal culture within the organization. Reconnecting individuals with the passion and meaning that originally attracted them to their organization, and then creating an architecture for sustaining that sense of meaning and purpose (with tools to support it), will allow members of any team to continue to operate with one another in the most productive and synergistic way.
Dan
Schwab, Senior Associate, joined TREC in January 2012 as
Director of the Human Resources Assistance Program. In this role,
Dan is working with TREC's clients to strengthen the human systems
that underlie any effective organization. Dan has been
involved in training and development for more than 20 years,
including eight years as Director of Staff Development at the Trust
for Public Land. Dan brings expertise in a wide range of
workplace topics, including leadership, supervision, personal
productivity, public speaking, project management, organizational
development and technology. Ever the intrepid traveler and
outdoorsman, Dan lives in Richmond, California, where he is actively
involved in helping his community transition to a post-petroleum
world.
Cheri Ryan, Website Designer, has designed and developed websites
and online applications since 1997. She does website assessments and
offers technology consultation to nonprofit organizations. Cheri has
worked with Facing the Future, NPower, WithinReach, Group Health, Housing
Resources Group and WildEarth Guardians.