Meet our Board of Directors
Peter Schoenburg, President, is a partner in the Albuquerque law offices of Rothstein, Donatelli, Hughes, Dahlstrom, Schoenburg & Bienvenu, LLP. He has practiced criminal defense law in New Mexico since 1978. He received his undergraduate degree at Yale College and his law degree at Rutgers School of Law. A former Federal and State Public Defender, as well as an Assistant Attorney General, since 1993 Peter has worked in private practice defending complex criminal cases in both Federal and State courts. He also regularly represents Native Americans charged with illegal possession of feathers in connection with their religious practices. He has been continuously listed in The Best Lawyers in America - Criminal Defense since 1994. Peter’s love of the wilderness and commitment to its preservation began in his child¬hood years in upstate New York. Beginning in law school he worked as an instructor at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in Maine and the, now defunct, Southwest Outward Bound School based in Santa Fe. He is an avid rafter, hiker, skier and cyclist.
Robin Smith, Vice-President, graduated from The Ohio State University in 1976, and promptly embarked upon a five-week bicycle trip across Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah that developed into a love affair with the Western landscape. The following summers found him sharing his love for wildlife and wild places as a naturalist and resource specialist at Carlsbad Caverns, Denali, Grand Canyon, Redwood, Rocky Mountain, and Yellowstone National Parks. Upon receiving a Master’s Degree in Environmental Science in 1988, Robin worked as an Environmental Scientist for the Ohio EPA. Moving into the non-profit sector, he was the Executive Director of In Defense of Endangered Species and later a Regional Director of the Native Forest Council. Robin has also served six years on the Board of Directors of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, where he shared responsibility for overseeing an organization with a staff of twenty-five and an annual operating budget of $2.4 million. Recently retired, Robin lives in western Colorado, where he is building a new home and striving to live a sustainable lifestyle by growing his own food and generating his own electricity and heat from renewable, non-polluting energy sources.
Shannon Larsen, Treasurer, is President of the Global Knowledge Initiative, a global science advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. She is the former Vice-President for Development and Corporate Relations directing SFI's fund development efforts and the Business Network, a corporate-affiliates program of 55 major corporations. She also directed the Institute’s International Program, an outreach and advocacy program to support cutting-edge science in developing countries. Prior to SFI she worked in Asia for nine years in refugee and environmental planning roles. She received her BA from Lewis and Clark College and her Masters and PhD from Cornell in Environmental Planning. While a student at Cornell, she interned at the Environmental Strategies and Economics Group in the EPA Office of Air Quality Practice and Standards. Her academic interests focused on the secondary effects of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act in fostering economic growth through a clean environment. She is a member the Advisory Boards of the Center for Advanced Studies in Biodiversity, Santiago Chile, Instituto de Sistemas Complejos de Valparaiso, Chile and CeiBa Institute for Complex Systems in Colombia.
Stephanie Forrest has been a board member since 2005 and involved with Forest Guardians since its founding in 1989. She is Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Stephanie received a B.A. from St. John’s College in Santa Fe (1977) and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan (1982,1985). Before joining UNM she worked in the soft¬ware industry and was a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is currently a member of the Santa Fe Institute Science Board and served as SFI’s Interim Vice President 1999-2000. Her research interests are in adaptive systems, including genetic algorithms, computational immunology, biological modeling, and computer security.
Jess Alford has been a board member since 1998 and served as Vice President 1999-2008. Raised in Paris, Texas, and a graduate of the University of Texas, Jess was a pilot in the Air Force for three years before beginning his career as an advertising photographer in Dallas. He received numerous awards including the CLIO award for creative excellence. Jess served on the board for the Texas Committee on Natural Resources in the 1980s and also on the board of the Natural Area Preservation Association. Jess coauthored, as photographer, Realms of Beauty: The Wilderness Areas of East Texas. He remains an avid photographer, now of birds in the wild, and is a major contributor to WildEarth Guardians’ publications.
Dave Jones is co-founder and V.P. of Engineering for Summit Doppler Systems, a medical ultrasound company located in Golden, Colorado. Dave's current technical emphasis is on the early detection of peripheral arterial disease. Dave has a strong interest and background in conservation. He currently serves as president of The Colorado Wilderness Alliance, which advocates for an improved policy process and science-based decision-making at the Colorado Division of Wildlife and Wildlife Commission. In recent years, Dave has worked to improve conservation prospects for a wide array of species including the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, cougar, and sandhill crane. He has also served on the Board of the Upper Arkansas South Platte Project and as conservation chairperson for the Evergreen Naturalists Audubon Society. Dave is an avid Yellowsteon wolf-watcher and a wildlife photographer. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1986. He joined Sinapu's Board in 2005.
Mark Rickman is a resident of Pueblo, CO and a board certified anesthesiologist. One of the founding partners of Anesthesia and Pain Management of Pueblo, Mark is the past department chairman and has also served on the Parkview Medical Center Foundation Board for six years. A Colorado native, Mark is dedicated to returning and protecting native carnivores to his home state. He and his wife Carol have spent thousands of hours in Yellowstone observing wolves and bears, and even spent an afternoon watching a resident mountain lion. They own a cabin near Silvergate, Montana just outside of Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park. Mark has collaborated in putting together several educational programs about wildlife and also assisted with the formation of the Southern Rockies Wolf Forum. Mark received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University and earned his M.D. from the University of Colorado. He’s been a board member since 2005.
Jon Spar completed his education at University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1984 and completed postgraduate training also at UNM in 1991. Jon has had an unbending interest in the environ¬ment and the outdoors since childhood, earning the name of “nature boy.” This epithet was usually said a derogatory manner and occasionally led to confrontations. Over the years, he has only strengthened resolve to do all he can for the environment and those life forms that are getting continuously trampled by man’s selfish, greedy actions. Currently, Jon works halftime at Lovelace Hospital in Albuquerque and halftime doing private contracting work in places where the bicycling is good. He enjoys bike racing and previously did triathlons. He attempts to use fossil fuels as little as possible in his daily life, and tries to convince others to minimize their impact on the environment. Solar installations in his home have significantly reduced his use of fossil sources of energy in the past two years. He is committed to promoting and investing in companies and industries that support alternative forms of energy. He lived over seas for a few years and is committed to living simply and less wastefully.
Vanessa Scurci divides her time between the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Denver, and as an urban dairy farmer in Lakewood, Colorado. She graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a B.A. in Religious Studies, with a focus on spirituality in Nature. Her appreciation for the outdoors began in the pine forests of New Jersey, continued through her high school years at Lawrenceville, where she shared an alma mater with Aldo Leopold, and truly blossomed during a semester in the Southwest with the National Outdoor Leadership School. Vanessa continued her commitment to environmental conservation as a director of the Wilderness Study Group at CU Boulder, where she campaigned for Colorado’s roadless areas and the Roan Plateau, and as a Project Leader with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, a lands restoration non-profit based in Boulder. She relies on her trusty bike and public transportation to commute and for local travel. With a beautiful Jersey cow and a humble garden, Vanessa and her husband Ethan are committed to grow, store, and process a large portion of their food.
Doug Erwin has been exploring New Mexico and the southwest since his first summer here as a kid in 1970. He credits summers in the Zuni Mountains and hiking in the Sierras with fostering a life-long love of nature. He is a Senior Scientist and Curator in Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he was previously Chair of the Science Steering Committee. His research on mass extinctions and evolutionary innovation has taken him all over the world, with principle field work recently in China and southern Africa.