Speaker Bios

Grant Beebe is the Deputy Assistant Director for Fire and Aviation, a position he was hired into in September of 2018.  He was formerly FA’s Division Chief for Budget and Evaluation.  Grant is originally from north of Chicago, grew up in various parts of the county, and was hired at the Great Basin Smokejumpers in Boise in 1990.  In 1997, he took a break from the BLM to work in Indonesia for the German government helping with fire training and fire readiness.  In 1998, he returned to Boise and became the Base Manager for the smokejumper unit.  Grant worked in planning and budget from 2006 through 2018.  Prior to being hired with the BLM, he worked for the Forest Service in northern California running a Type II fire crew program.  Grant attended University of California at Davis, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in Teaching.  He also holds a master’s degree in Forest Fire Management from Colorado State University.  Grant spends his free time with his wife and children at their new cabin in the Sawtooth Range northeast of Boise.

Jim spent a 42 year career in natural resource management at federal and state level. He held leadership positions with the Forest Service, in the Idaho Governor’s office, and retired as Director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Bio coming soon.

Patricia Champ is a research economist with the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins CO. She is an applied economist with expertise in nonmarket valuation and is lead editor on two editions of A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation. Her wildfire nonmarket research has contributed to understandings about the economic costs of wildfire smoke exposure and the effects of wildfire risk on home sales prices. Her primary wildfire research focus is on the intersection of community wildfire education programs and wildland-urban interface homeowners’ risk mitigating and wildfire preparation behaviors. She is a founding member of the Wildfire Research Team (WiRē), a collaboration of researchers and practitioners that conducts innovative applied wildfire research to help communities adapt and become resilient to wildfires.

Jamie E. Connell retired from the Bureau of Land Management in 2022. During her her four decade career in land management she served as a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Director for 12 years in 3 different regions: Colorado (2018-2022), Oregon/Washington (2016-2018), and the Montana-Dakotas State Director (2010-1016).

Prior to her appointment as a State Director, Jamie was BLM’s Northwest Colorado District Manager. She also served as a BLM and US Forest Service field level manager for the more than 20 years in numerous locations across Montana, Idaho, and Colorado gaining a diverse range of experience. She provided oversight for complex, significant energy development projects; managed extensive rangeland, wilderness and wildlife resources; and has administered some of our nation’s most visited ski areas. Jamie is a native of Montana. She graduated from Montana Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering. Jamie and her husband John are avid outdoor enthusiasts enjoying hiking, skiing, fly-fishing and upland hunting over their wirehaired birddogs. She also enjoys a good curling match and looks forward to improving her game on the ice as part of an active retirement.

Jamie is a member of the Public Lands Foundation, Interim Vice Chair for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, and Treasurer of the Billings Curling Club.

Throughout her career, Michele has been heavily involved in ecological research and modeling in the disciplines of landscape ecology as well as wildlife, fire, forest and sagebrush ecology, climate change, and invasive species management. In her current position, as a landscape ecologist for the BLM Fire Planning and Fuels Management Division, she leads the development, coordination, and application of science. She has produced several interagency geospatial assessments and frameworks used in large-scale prioritization and management of fire risk, vegetation restoration, and invasive annual grasses that have a negative influence on wildfire. She has led inter-agency teams to develop tools, guidance documents, and large-scale frameworks for wildland fire and natural resource management. She also collaborates with USGS, US Forest Service, universities, and other organizations on research projects that inform the placement of fuel treatments to help reduce uncharacteristic fire at national and regional scales. In her spare time, she was a director on the National Audubon Society’s Board for over 8 years.

Jim is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Northwestern Montana (CSKT). He holds a B.S. in Forest Resource Management from the University of Montana (‘87. He currently has over 39 years of experience in wildland fire management, forest planning and management, and environmental compliance. He is currently the Intertribal Timber Council’s (ITC) Wildland Fire Technical Specialist, contractor. Durglo was the Forestry Department Head for the CSKT from 2003-2017.

Prior to that, he was a Forestry Project Planning Program Manager, the National Environmental Policy Act Compliance Program Manager at CSKT; a Bureau of Indian Affair’s Environmental Specialist and Forestry Presales Officer at the Yakama Agency in Toppenish, WA; and a Presales Forester at the Warm Springs Agency in Central Oregon. Durglo also spent three summers with the US Forest Service as a smokejumper in Missoula, Montana.

Mark A. Finney is a Senior Scientist and Research Forester with the US Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. He has devoted his career to understanding fire as an ecological and physical process and has conducted research on prescribed burning and fuel treatment effects across the western United States. His wildfire modeling forms basis for operational wildfire predictions throughout the US. He holds a Ph.D. in wildland fire science from Univ. California at Berkeley (1991), an M.S. in Fire Ecology from University of Washington (1986), and a B.S. in Forestry from Colorado State University (1984).

Sheri Freemuth, AICP, has over 35 years’ experience in land use planning including the preparation of environmental studies and comprehensive plans. She is a skilled manager of people and projects, with experience in multiple sectors: public service, private consulting, and non-profit organizations. Ms. Freemuth has prepared NEPA environmental studies, applying her knowledge of land use, natural and cultural resources. At present, she is a Senior Planner with J-U-B Engineers supporting a variety of community and transportation planning projects for cities and counties. She has a Master of City Planning degree from San Diego State University and a Bachelor of Arts from Scripps College. She and John Freemuth were married in 1987 until his death in 2020.

Jennifer Forbey is a Full Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA. Her lab uses analytical chemistry, physiology, ecology, and remote sensing to predict mechanisms and consequences of the chemical interactions between plants and vertebrate herbivores. She applies these approaches to understand how sage-grouse and pygmy rabbits interact with sagebrush in post-fire habitats. Her projects help explain seasonal, annual, and spatial patterns of plants and vertebrate herbivores that help agencies and private landowners monitor and manage our working landscapes before and after wildfires.

Nancy began her career with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Boise, Idaho. After several years as the volunteer program coordinator, where she worked with BLM’s many partners on projects ranging from bitterbrush planting post-fire to constructing trails. In 1997 she accepted a position in the BLM’s Office of Fire and Aviation at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). At NIFC, Nancy worked in public affairs to coordinate and communicate wildland and prescribed fire and natural resource issues with partner agencies, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, the media, and the public. In 2005, she transitioned into leadership/management beginning with a position BLM Wyoming’s Kemmerer Field Office, and later as the field manager in Baker City, Oregon. In 2009, Nancy moved to California where she spent the final seven years of her BLM career as the Northern California district manager. While in this position, she also held senior leadership positions in Colorado, Idaho and Washington, D.C.

After retiring from BLM in 2016, Nancy pursued my second career as a certified professional mediator. She currently provides services for the Nevada and Idaho Supreme Courts as well as BLM.

Nancy’s passions include spending time with her children and grandchildren, backpacking, hiking, camping, photography, reading and writing. Her companions in these endeavors include her husband, Dave, and mini-Aussie, Maija.

Becki retired after nearly 40 years with the Forest Service, in December 2018. She has worked for the past 2 ½ years as the Program Development Consultant for National Experienced Workers Solutions (NEW Solutions), a nonprofit that delivers the Forest Service ACES program.

In 2020 she began consulting with the Forest Service, testing structured Decision Making and Risk Management processes in the Forest Service. This has led to content and delivery for both the Senior Leader Program and the Line Officer Academy’s, sponsored by the agency.

She currently serves on the Board for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR) as the Pacific Northwest representative.

She finished her career in a long-term detail to the WO, as Acting Associate Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry. For nearly 2 years, her work focused on risk management, testing, and improving risk informed decision making in wildfire situations, and further connecting line and fire leadership.

Prior to this she served for 4 years as the Deputy Regional Forester for the Pacific Northwest Region. Previously she served as the Forest Supervisor on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, in Wenatchee Washington, from August 2007 until September 2013. And prior to that, she served 6 years as the Forest Supervisor on the Gallatin National Forest, in Bozeman Montana.

Becki was District Ranger for the Leavenworth Ranger District on the Wenatchee National Forest from 1990-1999, then the Deputy Forest Supervisor for the Deschutes in Bend Oregon, until late 2001. Her early positions ranged from silviculturist to presale forester, on the Mt. Hood, Ochoco, Umatilla and Wenatchee National Forests.

She has a BS in Resource and Recreation Management from the OSU School of Forestry and a MS in Forest Management from the University of Washington.

Tim is the current Chairman of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commission; he was the BLM Director of Fire & Aviation at the National Interagency Fire Center; and BLM Idaho State Director. Tim was past Chair and a current Board Member of the University of Idaho Rangeland Center Partners Advisory Council.

James R. (Jamie) Skillen is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of Calvin Ecosystem Preserve and Native Gardens at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI. He did his undergraduate work in Environmental Science and holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from Cornell University. His writing includes The Nation’s Largest Landlord: The Bureau of Land Management in the American West (2009); Federal Ecosystem Management: It’s Rise, Fall, and Afterlife (2015); and most recently This Land is My Land: Rebellion in the West (Oxford University Press, 2020). He teaches environmental studies courses, including regular field courses on federal land management in California and Oregon.

Biography coming soon.

Kristy Swartz coordinates the fuels management and post-fire programs and supports coordinated implementation of all the wildland fire provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the Department of the Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire. She’s in her 28th year working in federal wildland fire management and has had the opportunity to work for two DOI Bureaus – the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management as well as USDA Forest Service along the way. She majored in Biology in college and started fighting fire with the Forest Service while still in school.

Jared Talley was born and raised in the Southwestern Idaho and is deeply connected to Idaho’s desert communities. He earned his doctorate in the philosophy of environmental governance from Michigan State University and his master’s in environmental policy and natural resource management from Boise State University. His research is place-based and focuses on community collaboration in the environmental governance of the American West; he is an environmental philosopher by training and an interdisciplinary scholar by practice. Jared’s work seeks to better understand how communities relate to the land and how this relationship poses obstacles and opportunities for collaboration and governance. Specifically, he works on grazing management and public land permitting, community-led monitoring programs, place-based environmental governance, rural environmental collaboration, and the imaginative experience of our natural and built environments — all in the contexts of the intermountain American West.

Rick Tholen is a retired federal forester who worked in 4 western states and Washington, D.C. during his 34 year career. He spent most of his career with the Bureau of Land Management and concluded his federal employment in 2008 working as a Senior Advisor for Forestry and Fire in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management. Rick earned a bachelor’s degree from Humboldt State University and a Masters degree from the University of Idaho. He is a member of the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership and the Payette Forest Coalition and is an Society of American Foresters Fellow.

Tom has spent over 50 years working in wildland fire management. He served with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Park Service (NPS), and US Forest Service (USFS) in training, program management, policy development, technology transfer, wildland fire use, prescribed fire, wildfire and emergency response, fire ecology, fire behavior, long-term risk assessment, and decision support, in both research and management branches. He has been an Incident Commander and Area Commander on Incident Management, Fire Use Management, and Area Command Teams. He has published three book chapters and over 80 professional papers and has a B.S. in Forestry, an M.S. in Forestry/Fire Ecology, and Ph.D. in Forest Fire Science. He is a certified Senior Wildland Fire Manager and Senior Fire Ecologist by the AFE and since retirement has served as a consultant in wildland fire management and emergency response and on the Board of Directors and President of the International Association of Wildland Fire.