Understory Initiative Board of Directors
Kevin Talbert
Board Chair
Kevin Talbert is an active volunteer in many community and conservation organizations. He is currently Board member and past president of the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy as well as a board member of the Crater Lake Natural History Association and the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts. Kevin enjoys hiking, rafting, camping, birding and reading.
Sara Mosser
Board Treasurer
Sara, a deep generalist and self-proclaimed "jill-of-all-trades", grew up in San Diego but knew she belonged among jade rivers and evergreen trees when she first visited Humboldt County, CA. After earning a B.S. in Biology from Humboldt State University, she continued north into the lush Pacific Northwest. In Bellingham, Sara worked for the Washington Conservation Corps restoring riparian zones for salmon habitat enhancement, collected spawner survey data, and assisted in water quality sampling and analysis on many of Whatcom County’s waterways. Seeing how a well-planned built environment could support and preserve the natural environment, she then journeyed to Madison, Wisconsin for a M.S. degree in Urban and Regional Planning. Sara and her family relocated to southern Oregon in 2016 to work in regional agriculture connecting producers to buyers, but soon found herself back in watershed management as the Outreach and Communications coordinator for Rogue Riverkeeper. She is currently the Executive Director of Rogue Basin Partnership, and program assistant with Network for Landscape Conservation. Sara has always been a person that builds robust networks, both professionally and personally. She looks forward to creating strong relationships in the Rogue Basin and supporting projects that enhance the region’s unique natural environment.
Molly Morrison
Board Member
Molly served for 25 years as the Preserve Manager for The Nature Conservancy’s SW Oregon field office where she stewarded TNC’s conserved lands, coordinated volunteers, led education programs and cultivated diverse partnerships. Previous work included 9 years as a District Botanist on the Mt. Hood NF. With her business partner she produces vibrant wines from their 4-acre certified biodynamic vineyard (Upper Five Winery) in Talent. Molly has held leadership roles with Southern Oregon Land Conservancy and collaborated with many conservation organizations throughout southern Oregon.
Kathy Kentta-Robinson
Board Member
Kathy currently is the Project Coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, (CTSI) Healthy Traditions program. She is an enrolled member of CTSI and serves her community as an educator, culture bearer, promotes healthy lifeways, leading native plant restoration and enhancement projects on tribal lands, and harvesting traditional foods and medicines. Her family made it a social family activity to gather roots, berries, as well as harvest Clams, Mussels, Dungeness crab, and fish the Siletz River. Healthy Traditions activities reinforce our connection to the land, rivers and sea. Kathy directed the development of curriculum for 6th grade students in a partnership with The Institute for Applied Ecology. The workbooks “Estuaries Ecology Curriculum” and “Wetlands Ecology Curriculum” are available as free downloads from the Institute for Applied Ecology website, or CTSI website.
Kathryn Prive
Board Member & Executive Director
Kathryn grew up in Minnesota but has called the west coast home since 2003. She has a M.S. in population genetics and ecological restoration from Oregon State University and a B.S in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon. Kathryn has expertise in partnership coordination, population genetics, ecological restoration and botany. She is passionate about native plant community restoration and seed production.
Kathryn is a founding member and previous board chair of The Understory Initiative. Her role as executive director at The Understory Initiative is to guide program development and foster greater support for herbaceous plant community restoration in Southern Oregon and Northern California.
John Villella
Board Member
John has had a lifelong fascination with nature and has spent the last two decades studying and documenting the biodiversity of the Pacific Northwest as an environmental educator and an ecological consultant specializing in rare species. He is especially interested in plants and their invertebrate pollinators.
John has served on the board of directors for several non-profits including the Northwest Scientific Association and the Northwest Lichenologists. He is a founding member of the Biodiversity Research Collective, a non-profit research institute dedicated to biodiversity studies. John has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers and was recently awarded the Letharia Award by the California Lichen Society for his years of service as Editor of the CALS Bulletin. He also regularly leads natural history related hikes and workshops in southwest Oregon and the broader Pacific Northwest.
Sarah Burns
Board member
Sarah Burns is an artist living and working in Southern Oregon. She uses observation-based traditional European oil painting techniques to document and highlight a sense of time and place, through plein air and studio work. Sarah grew up in Southern Oregon and notes changes in the landscape throughout the seasons and the years in her work. Her observation-based practice has led to scientific inquiry and armchair study of clouds, geology, ecology. She finds that scientific exploration often equals artistic inspiration and nurtures her wonder and awe of the natural world.
Sarah works with a variety of groups to connect people with the arts and the outdoors, including Schneider Museum of Art, Vesper Meadow and the Friends of the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. She teaches painting and drawing through her Talent, OR studio – Project Space (www.artprojectspace.com) and leads plein air painting classes and meet-ups in Southern Oregon. www.sarahfburns.com
Jason Clark
Board Member
Jason Clark has over twenty years of experience as a professional field botanist, plant ecologist, and wetland scientist in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. His expertise includes vascular and non-vascular plant and fungi surveys, plant community mapping, ecological restoration design, and ecological monitoring. As a company manager, Mr. Clark provides leadership to project logistics, coordinates field crews, manages and processes data, and coordinates client communications. Mr. Clark also brings expertise in restoration design to our team. He coordinates with clients to guide successful restoration projects in wetland and upland habitats. Mr. Clark also brings GIS expertise to the SBS team; he provides geospatial data analysis and creates mapping deliverables on a variety of team projects. He received his field lichenologist certification with Northwest Lichenologists in 2009.