SCIENCE, FORESTRY, & TECH LEADERSHIP

Allison Wolff

Chief Executive Officer

Allison worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years on corporate strategy, product strategy, customer experience design, and marketing. After overseeing the development of the Netflix brand and digital experience Allison advised corporate and nonprofit leadership teams on vision, strategy, and social and environmental innovation. Clients included Drawdown, Google, eBay, Facebook, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, Patagonia, Nike, HP, Conservation International, and GlobalGiving. With growing knowledge and passion for the role forests and soil can play in carbon drawdown, she is focusing her full attention on developing technology solutions that restore damaged ecosystems and, ultimately, build community and wildland resilience.

Dr. Neil Hunt

Chief Product Officer

Neil was Chief Product Officer for Netflix from 1999 to 2018, responsible for the design, implementation and operation of the technology at Netflix. Prior to Netflix, Neil had engineering leadership roles at Rational Software and Pure Atria. In 2018, he was cofounder at Curai, a venture-backed health tech company applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to primary care medicine. Neil serves on the boards of directors of Logitech, Roku, and Vibrant Planet.

Scott Conway

Chief Resilience Officer

Scott brings proven natural resource leadership and management experience to multi-jurisdictional wild and working land management challenges. Scott is a 20-year US Forest Service veteran in land management with a diverse set of roles including District Ranger, Spatial Ecologist, Fire Fighter and Forester. Scott is determined to help transition data to insight in an effort to streamline all aspects of the land management lifecycle with the ultimate goal of making our communities more defensible and our wild and working lands more resilient to climate exacerbated disturbance. Download Scott’s resume.

Guy Bayes

Chief Technology Officer

Guy is an engineering leader with twenty years of experience in the data space. He has built and led engineering organizations at some of Silicon Valleys' top organizations, including Lyft, Facebook, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, in addition to founding and growing copious startups.

Currently, he is focused on using data and AI to power natural climate solutions management, in order to mitigate and roll back climate change.

Dr. Hugh Safford

Chief Scientist

Before joining Vibrant Planet as its chief scientist in January, 2022, Dr. Hugh Safford was Regional Ecologist for the USDA-Forest Service’s Region 5 (California, Hawaii, Pacific territories) for more than two decades. In synergy with his work at Vibrant Planet, Safford is a member of the research faculty at the University of California-Davis. Safford is director of the Sierra Nevada section of the California Fire Science Consortium, and he is PI of the California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program (a partnership with CALFIRE), as well as the multipartner Southern California Montane Forest Conservation Strategy. Safford has provided international technical assistance on fire, forest management, and climate change issues since the 1990s. Recent projects include fire risk mapping in Georgia, fire management planning in Mexico, climate change adaptation in Brazil, and forest restoration in North Africa and the Levant. Safford was a Fulbright Fellow between 2017 and 2019, where he studied post-fire ecosystem restoration practices in the Mediterranean Basin. Safford co-edited the 2021 Postfire Restoration Framework for National Forests in California, which provides guidance for management decision-making in burned ecosystems under changing environmental baselines. Visit the Safford Lab at UC-Davis. Download Hugh’s resume, and his full CV. 

Ashley Conrad-Saydah

Chief Climate Officer

Ashley translates Vibrant Planet’s cutting-edge science and technology tools into actionable policy as VP’s Chief Climate Officer. A recognized expert in climate change, renewable energy and natural resources policy, Ashley serves on the Governing Board of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Sandia National Laboratories’ Energy & Homeland Security External Advisory Board. She previously worked in climate and energy policy at the California Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. Ashley mentors women through She Shares and serves on the Advisory Board of the UC Davis Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management. Throughout her career, she has worked to provide all people access to nature, education, healthy communities, and good jobs. Ashley lives in Sacramento with her family. Download Ashley’s resume.

Chief Impact Officer

Geoff leads Marketing, Business Development, Sales and Customer Success teams in support of the company’s revenue-generation strategy and go-to-market approach. He is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of leadership. Prior to joining Vibrant Planet, Geoff was Chief Revenue Officer for Rehearsal.com and led the company to acquisition in early 2022.

Geoff has a professional history of quickly accelerating growth for start-up companies and inspiring mature companies to sell strategically and with greater visionary aspirations. During his career, he has managed sales teams, key partnerships, and implemented comprehensive sales, customer success and marketing strategies that help companies scale rapidly. He has a deep understanding of technology and is skilled in identifying emerging trends and opportunities and aligning those with market need. His ability to build and lead high-performing teams has helped him consistently deliver results and exceed revenue targets.  

Geoff holds an undergraduate degree from Clemson University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Chief Operating & Financial Officer

Most recently, Peter was a COO/CFO at Tascent, Inc. He has over 20 years of experience in VC/PE, investments, corporate finance, and technology. Peter has worked at a variety of companies, including Tano Capital, Barclays Global Investors, Franklin Templeton Investments and Blue Cross Blue Shield. In addition, he serves on the Board of U.S.-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund.

Spatial Analyst

Ryan is a geospatial professional with over ten years of experience using GIS and remote sensing to address complex natural resource challenges. His forestry experience ranges from broadscale regional biomass assessments to terrestrial lidar scanning of individual trees. Additionally, he has worked on numerous remote sensing projects in the realms of ecology, wildlife, and water resources through his experience in academia and private environmental consulting. His previous projects include Joshua tree population assessments, quantification of Canada lynx understory habitat, and development of a statewide water use index. At Vibrant Planet, Ryan applies his passion for the environment and geospatial experience to improve landscape resilience.

Judy Bergwerk

FinOps Manager

Judy has seven years of experience with business operations and transactional accounting for nonprofit and forprofit entities. At Vibrant Planet, she runs our virtual office, runs day-to-day finance, and background operations that keep the company running smoothly.

Judy spent her early career on the engineering team for a number of Silicon Valley hardware companies. The majority of her time was with Silicon Graphics, as a manufacturing engineer focusing on design for manufacturability on the high end graphic computers, and transitioning production from pilot to full scale manufacturing.

Zander Bonorris

Director of Partnerships

Zander joins Vibrant Planet with a background in strategic partnerships, business development and government relations, at the intersection of technology and private-public partnerships. Most recently, he led the go-to-market strategy, partnerships and customer success programs with the largest universities and partner cities in the US, for Spin, a major micro mobility player in the country.

Zander is passionate about conservation, the natural world, and human wellbeing. He particularly enjoys partnering with government agencies and public entities that perceive the power of harnessing data and technology to promote sustainable, climate-friendly strategies for the future. He believes that the potential of public-private partnerships is paramount in promoting nature-based carbon drawdown, restoring critical natural ecosystems, and building community resilience. As a lifelong outdoor enthusiast, Zander spends his free time exploring the Sierra and other natural landscapes by foot, mountain bike, and backcountry skis.

Geospatial Lead

April is a GIS programmer/analyst who has enjoyed working with geospatial technology for over 17 years. She uses Python to explore interesting spatial questions, especially within ecological applications such as national forest plan revisions, wildfire risk assessments, and environmental impacts for proposed projects. She enjoys using her GIS knowledge and experience to develop new workflows, to increase efficiency and data integrity, and to enable others to do more with the resources available. She's excited to join Vibrant Planet and help expand the toolsets we can use as stewards of this incredible place we live.

Mike Cartmill

Forester

Mike has nearly 15 years of experience working within various government and non-government land management organizations throughout the western United States including the United States Forest Service (USFS), United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL). Mike has also worked with a variety of partners and collaborators to develop project proposals and oversee implementation. He has forged lasting relationships that are an integral element of creating a successful long-term resilient forest. With 15 years of project implementation, layout and administration experience Mike brings an optimistic sense of professional realism to the table. 

Dr. Tony Chang

Lead Data Scientist

Tony joined Vibrant Planet with a background in forest modeling, species distribution modeling, deep learning, data visualization, and big data analysis. He specializes in applying machine learning techniques to ecological issues, including climate change and forest disturbances. He has extensive experience on forest structure modeling utilizing deep convolutional neural networks to interpret high resolution imagery in the conterminous U.S. Tony has over 15 years of combined field- and research-based conservation experience with numerous federal agencies and NGOs. A 2013–2017 NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow, he is a 2017 recipient of the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship from the Society for Conservation Biology, 2018 recipient of the Microsoft AI for Earth Grant, and a 2021-2022 Wilburforce Leader in Conservation Science. Download Tony’s resume.

Dr. Katharyn Duffy

Director of Science Operations

Dr. Katharyn Duffy works at the intersection of forestry, wildfire, and EcoInformatics - ecology and ‘big data’. She co-authored the first wildfire-focused forest carbon methodology, and continues to innovate data-driven methods to support natural climate solutions. Katharyn’s focus at Vibrant Planet includes building data and interfaces to support monitoring, reporting, and forecasting the ecosystem benefits of sustainable forest management. Katharyn’s broader work also includes developing and supporting courses and open-source textbooks on Interdisciplinary Team-Based Science and Ecological Informatics using Open Research Infrastructures and their Data to support open, reproducible, and inclusive science. Download Katharyn’s resume.

Cyrus Dukart

Product Engineering Lead

Cyrus joins Vibrant Planet with 15+ years in the data space. He brings industry experience that spans Energy, Finance, Commerce, HR, and Media. Prior to Vibrant Planet, Cyrus spent 9 years working on core data engineering and data products at Facebook.  He is an information visualization guru who is passionate about leveraging data for social good. Cyrus brings his energy, technical abilities, and leadership experience to help Vibrant Planet realize its mission to make communities and ecosystems more resilient in the face of climate change. Formerly at Facebook, Microstrategy, IBM.

Joe Flannery

Director of Customer Success

Joe possesses a unique combination of natural resource education with over ten years of experience in partnerships and communication with the United States Forest Service. In the USFS, Joe focused on increasing key stakeholder and public engagement to support conservation organizations and government agencies’ efforts to increase the pace and scale of landscape restoration.

Joe is passionate about conservation education and believes a well-informed public is one far likely to support future endeavors to conserve biodiversity, sustainably utilize natural resources, and prioritize carbon drawdown. As a documentary filmmaker, Joe’s projects have focused on biodiversity and conservation including subjects such as free-ranging bison, wildfire, spring-run chinook salmon, grasslands, and the return of wolves to California. Download Joe’s resume.

Tyler Ford

Technical Project Manager

Tyler is a project manager with a background in complex National Environmental Policy Act analyses and stakeholder facilitation. He has experience in reviewing and writing technical resource analyses, engaging with representatives from the private and public sectors, and developing and mapping geospatial data. As someone who enjoys learning and interpreting complicated information and distilling it to be understandable to internal and external audiences, he is excited to translate this into moving the mission of Vibrant Planet forward. Outside of work, he spends most of his time in active pursuits such as running, biking, gymnastics, and working up the courage to “send it” on skis. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Vermont and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Dr. Sophie Gilbert

Lead Scientist, Biodiversity

Dr. Sophie Gilbert is the Lead Scientist for Biodiversity at Vibrant Planet. Sophie works to include key forms of biodiversity, as well as other ecosystem services, into human decision-making, and to better value nature in our economy and society. For more than 15 years, Sophie has advanced the fields of ecology and conservation to support sustainable wildlife populations in the changing modern world. She’s worked across diverse systems from Alaska through Canada and into the heart of the American West, and collaborated with interdisciplinary scientists, natural resource agencies, NGOs, indigenous groups, stakeholders, and citizen scientists. She communicates broadly and innovatively via professional and public talks, social media, documentary videos and podcasts. Sophie has previously worked as a tenured professor at the University of Idaho, as well as the senior lead for biodiversity at the Natural Capital Exchange (NCX) to drive innovation in ecosystem services crediting. She earned her B.Sc. from the University of California Los Angeles and her Ph.D. from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Mitchell Gritts

Software Engineer

Mitchell has a degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from University of Nevada, Reno. For the last nine years he worked at Nevada Department of Wildlife as a data analyst, web developer, and database administrator. Some of his favorite projects in the past include movement ecology of large ungulates (deer, bighorn, elk) and building tools to increase access to hunting and fishing data for Nevada hunters and anglers.

Dr. Andreas (Andi) Gros

Machine Learning Lead Engineer

Andi joined Vibrant Planet after working for more than 10 years as a research scientist in Silicon Valley. Andi specializes in machine learning, computer vision, and data science. His background is in mathematics, computer science, complex systems, and ecology. Andi was a member of Meta’s Core-Data-Science Team and one of the first contributors to Meta’s Data-for-Good program. He led the work on Meta’s High-Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL), which is a gridded population dataset for more than 190 countries. HRSL is used internationally for humanitarian purposes and infrastructure planning. Andi holds a PhD in Theoretical Ecology and a Diplom (M.S.) in Complex Systems Analysis. He holds 4 patents and has (co-)authored 18 peer-reviewed publications. At Vibrant Planet he focuses on scaling and productionizing models used to understand forest vegetation and prevent wildfires.

Ian Hageman

Geospatial Systems Administrator

Ian has over a decade of experience in geospatial technology which includes developing, maintaining, and analyzing complex geospatial datasets to help make informed, data-driven decisions. Ian comes from a background in natural resource management and has led geospatial projects within his local community as well as globally around the world. Ian’s professional experience includes working and collaborating with partners in the private sector as well as local and international governmental agencies. Ian’s expertise includes geodatabase administration, geospatial/remote sensing analysis, and maintenance of critical datasets. Ian brings a unique, agile, and diverse set of geospatial skills to the Vibrant Planet team.

Dr. Ryan Herring

Software Engineer

Ryan has over a decade of experience in large-scale geospatial data processing and software engineering. He holds a PhD in Operations Research from UC Berkeley and spent 10 years working on navigation within Apple Maps. He is excited to bring those skill sets and experiences to Vibrant Planet to make a positive impact on the climate. Outside of work, you will find Ryan running on the trails around the Tahoe region.

Dr. Tyler Hoecker

Lead Scientist, Monitoring & Forecasting

Tyler is a landscape ecologist focused on understanding the drivers of forest ecosystem change – especially fire and climate – and identifying opportunities for climate-adaptive stewardship. Tyler’s work has revealed how climate-driven changes in the frequency and severity of wildfires are transforming conifer forests across the Western U.S. today and what we can expect of forests in the future. Tyler holds a M.S. from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tyler was a Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Washington and the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center from 2021-2023 before joining Vibrant Planet and has worked as a field and research ecologist for the last 13 years. Tyler is excited to put cutting-edge quantitative ecology into the hands of land managers and decision makers.

Jasmijn Al Kenany & Sophia Koch

Social Media Managers

Jasmijn and Sophia are both undergrad students at Leiden University studying liberal arts and sciences. With interests in sustainable practices and environmental narratives, they create and share engaging and informative content, keeping Vibrant Planet’s social media pages up-to-date and active.

Through their work, they hope to spread awareness about the benefits of effective forest management and further Vibrant Planet’s mission.

Dr. Mike Koontz

Monitoring & Forecasting Lead

Mike is a plant ecologist and geospatial data scientist that works to understand disturbance dynamics across scales in a changing climate. At Vibrant Planet, he is leading the development of a system for monitoring critical forest resources, and forecasting them into uncertain climate change futures. He is excited to contribute to Vibrant Planet’s blend of innovative data science and deep domain knowledge in the effort to aid management of disturbance-prone forests at the pace and scale necessary to increase community and ecosystem resilience. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Davis and also maintains an active research program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Download Mike’s resume.

Vincent Landau

Monitoring Data Scientist

Vincent joins Vibrant Planet with extensive experience in ecological research and data science across non-profit and industry sectors. Holding a master’s degree in ecology from Colorado State University, Vincent’s diverse background helps him bridge the gap between natural resource management, data science, and software engineering. By combining his ecological knowledge with his skills and experience in machine learning methods and principles, his goal is to support evidence-based decision making for effective and sustainable forest management.

Dr. Kevin McGarigal

Landscape Ecologist

Kevin is an applied research landscape ecologist, having earned a BS degree in Forestry and Wildlife from Virginia Tech, an MS. degree in Wildlife Science from Oregon State University, and a PhD in Forest Science from Oregon State University. He was a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from 1997 until 2019.  Kevin’s applied research focuses on understanding how landscapes are structured physically and biologically and the agents responsible for those patterns, how these patterns affect the distribution and dynamics of plant and animal populations, how these patterns and processes change over time, and how to apply this information to better manage natural resources over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Accordingly, a major component of his work has been the development and technical support of software tools for both scientists and managers (e.g., FRAGSTATS) for quantifying landscape patterns and landscape dynamics. In particular, Kevin is the developer of a landscape disturbance-succession simulation model (LDSim) for simulating the range of variation in landscape patterns under natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes to help land managers gain a quantitative understanding of the landscape under historical reference period conditions and alternative future scenarios. Kevin is eager to bring his substantial experience, knowledge, and prolific set of tools and software to enhance Land Tender and the future suite of decision support applications that are currently being developed by Vibrant Planet. Download Kevin’s resume.

Lily Michelson

Director of Revenue Operations & Enablement

Lily is an experienced go-to-market leader, bringing years of high-growth Silicon Valley tech experience to help companies of all sizes scale their operations to meet audacious goals. She loves working at the intersection of revenue, operations, and strategy in mission-driven companies and has helped accelerate the growth of Impossible Foods, Square, and AllTrails through a penchant for problem-solving, process, and data-driven decision making. She is thrilled to bring her experience to the Vibrant Planet team and help accelerate the pace of wildland restoration to make our landscapes and communities more resilient to climate change.

When not nerding out over data, process, and efficiency, Lily can be found running around the Sierra Nevada mountains with friends or enjoying some backcountry powder turns. Lily has a B.A in Geography from Dartmouth College and is excited to be working for a company pushing the boundaries in spatial analysis. 

Dr. Colton Miller

Forest Ecologist

Colton is a researcher in forest and fire ecology whose current work uses remote sensing and geospatial analysis to investigate landscape change due to wildland fire. Colton got his boots dirty in forestry as a pre-sale forester with the Quinault Indian Nation where he became interested in how new technologies could be leveraged to map and model the impacts of disturbance and management on forest ecosystems. Colton has collaborated on research with the U.S. Forest Service, Washington Department of Natural Resources, and The Nature Conservancy as well as other universities. His knowledge and expertise span a wide range of ecological phenomena, from microbiology and seedling-soil interactions to remote sensing and landscape scale fire dynamics. Download Colton’s resume.

Marcelo Murachovsky

Product Designer

Marcelo is a product designer with over 15 years of experience leading and designing world-class solutions for several industries including finance, healthcare, and agriculture, in Brazil and Silicon Valley. He recently led design teams at BovControl and Hearsay Systems, creating user-friendly solutions to complex problems.

Cameron Musser, RPF #3197 

Forester

Cameron is a Registered Professional Forester in the state of California. Originally from the Southern California mountains, Cameron’s early experience with fire and tree mortality shaped her training at UC Berkeley and Yale where she studied plant ecophysiology and forest ecology, focusing on the process of physiological drought stress in California tree species. Her passion for restoring drought and fire- resilient conditions in California forests led her to a career in forestry. She has 5 years of management experience in planning and implementing forest health projects across the state, federal, and private sectors. Cameron is excited to offer Vibrant Planet her critical eye for management recommendations to ensure stakeholders meet their objectives while upholding environmental standards. Download Cameron’s resume.

Tory Nelson

Product Manager

Tory is a product leader with 20 years of experience in the data world ranging from taxonomy development to observational and experimental data analysis to social network analysis to financial reporting to big data infra to insight generation and data visualization. As an enthusiastic member of the California Native Plant Society, she is excited to bring her experience to helping people adapt to environmental and climate change-driven threats and improve our collective care for the land. Formerly at Lyft, Facebook, Guidewire, Detica/BAE.

Molly Parker

Executive Assistant

Molly is our Executive Assistant bringing over 10 years of experience in her field. Starting her journey as a Nanny and Personal Assistant in the San Francisco area, she now brings her care and organization to Vibrant Planet. Molly is a California native who is excited to be part of a group building tools designed to protect our land. At this job she is looking forward to assisting our leaders and supporting our team in their amazing work.

Heather Peceniak

Technical Project Manager

Heather is a highly detailed, quality and customer experience focused GIS professional with over ten years of work experience in public safety. She has collaborated with various state and local government entities to help deploy geospatial solutions to provide data-driven results that save lives and property. She is passionate about customer success through geospatial implementation that helps make communities and ecosystems more adaptable to wildfires. Download Heather’s resume.

Danielle Perrot

Applied Ecologist

Danielle is a research scientist with 8 years of experience in hydrology, water resources management, and environmental sciences. She is passionate about improving natural resource management by developing better tools for decision-making. She worked as an undergraduate and graduate student researcher at UCLA and CU Boulder, in water rights administration and water conservation for the City of Greeley (Colorado), and most recently in water resources engineering for the Center for Water Resources at RTI International where she assisted in the development of water forecast systems for a variety of clients across the United States. She is excited to contribute her unique perspective to support Vibrant Planet’s team and mission. Download Danielle’s resume.

Dr. Joe Shannon

Lead Scientist, Applied Hydrology

Dr. Joe Shannon joined Vibrant Planet in 2023 as the Lead Scientist for Applied Hydrology. His focus is on incorporating the protection, enhancement, and restoration of hydrologic functions into natural resource planning. Joe has a wide range of experience in forested ecosystems having worked in academic research, timber sale preparation, and climate tech. He spent 14 years researching the effects and interactions of forest management, invasive species, and climate change on ecosystem function and water use. Following his time as a researcher he joined the Natural Capital Exchange (NCX) as a data scientist, where he contributed to building a marketplace for nature based solutions and led work on novel causal inference approaches for forest carbon projects. He graduated with a B.Sc.F. from the University of New Hampshire, a M.Sc. from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, and a Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University.

Sky Skach

Director of Resilience Operations

Sky manages the day to day operations of the Resilience group in collaboration with VP Chief Resilience Officer, Scott Conway. Sky is a resource management generalist with expertise in GIS analysis, data and asset management, natural and cultural resource preservation and project implementation and management. She has an educational background in landscape architecture and ecology and over a decade of experience in the public sector ranging from the municipal government to experience with the federal government as a US Peace Corps Volunteer and National Park Service employee. Download Sky’s resume.

Bogdan State

Head of Machine Learning

Bogdan joined Vibrant Planet after running scie.nz, a small data consultancy, and developing aorist, a data engineering library for machine learning applications. Prior to scie.nz Bogdan spent 7 years working on the Facebook Core Data Science team. At Facebook, Bogdan was responsible for the implementation and delivery of several large software systems using advanced machine learning techniques, with scopes ranging from spam detection, business intelligence, data management and high-stakes analytics. Bogdan holds a PhD in Sociology and M.S. in Computer Science, both from Stanford University, as well as a B.A. in History and Sociology from Amherst College. He has authored of 18 peer-reviewed publications in Computational Social Science, as well as 14 patents and patent applications. At Vibrant Planet he is excited to dive into environmental science, while bringing his skills in dealing with large, complicated datasets to the climate problem.

Maria Tran

Product Manager

Maria is a seasoned product leader with over 20 years of product management experience in Silicon Valley, with industry experience that spans the sciences, insurance, and social media. She has conceived and built innovative analytics and enterprise applications at Facebook, Guidewire, and Informatica, and has managed products and advised at Palantir, Hearsay Social, and National Ignition Facility. Maria specializes in building out scaled, analytical platforms that power decision making. She’s currently working on Vibrant Planet’s Carbon application.

Chelsey Walden-Schreiner

Vice President of Applied Science

Chelsey works at the intersection of natural resource management, geospatial data science, and communications. She is passionate about the ability of place and technology to bring data, disciplines, and people together to support inclusive decision making and solve complex challenges. Across her roles in academia, industry, and philanthropy, she has worked closely with stakeholders from federal and state government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and communities around the world to co-create models and decision support tools to address pressing socio-environmental challenges. She earned her MS and PhD from North Carolina State University in forestry and environmental resources and a BA from Iowa State University in journalism and mass communications. She’s excited to bring her unique combination of experience to Vibrant Planet in support of turning accessible data and insights into action that builds community and ecosystem resilience. Download Chelsey’s resume.

Dr. Janet Wiener

Principal Software Engineer

Janet is a software generalist with over 30 years of expertise in data, from database internals up through user-facing apps that make sense of mountains of data. She is energized by the promise of reducing fires in California and excited to make data power Vibrant Planet’s products.

Janet has written over 50 peer reviewed publications and holds 20 patents. She earned a PhD in Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and previously worked at Stanford University, DEC, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook. Slack, and several start-ups.

Nahum Wild

Product Engineering Lead

Nahum is actively involved in the New Zealand web development community, having run various meetups, weekend technology retreats and a conference. He served as a founding member of Ruby New Zealand.

He is a sought after Engineer and CTO working in Wellington, NZ growing teams and building award winning products. He is passionate about creating solutions and experiences that work so well they go unnoticed; coaching newly minted engineers; and making things less complicated.

Working in startups is what gets him up in the morning and there is normally an idea or two he's hacking away on. He frequently spends his weekends planting trees and making pizza.

Brittany Wray

Head of Business Development

Brittany is an entrepreneurial business executive and brings to Vibrant Planet vast experience in go-to-market strategy, business development, and sales from some of the most innovative companies in the world. From large global organizations like Uber and AOL to small startups like Tapjoy, Momentous, and Dr. B she has led teams and products through every business stage from incubation to global launch. With curiosity, collaboration and customer obsession at her core, she has executed partnerships and deals with some of the most beloved brands and technologies. She cultivates team cultures where innovation, diversity and taking intelligent risks thrives.  Brittany believes that businesses have the power to drive meaningful change and her approach is anchored in empowering organizations to create win-win solutions that benefit the well-being of communities and the planet. Through her work at Vibrant Planet she strives to inspire others to bring together the best technology, science, and human-powered grit to combat climate change.

Dr. Derek Young

Forest Analytics Lead

Derek is a forest ecologist and data scientist. He brings over 10 years of experience as a university researcher studying forest disturbance and recovery, evaluating management interventions such as forest thinning and tree planting, and developing new methods for forest mapping using drones and computer vision. At Vibrant Planet he is working to incorporate the best available science, data, and analytical techniques to support forest management decision-making. Derek also maintains an active forest ecology research program at the University of California, Davis.

Hannah Young

Associate Technical Project Manager

Hannah is passionate about tackling some of the world’s most pressing social-environmental problems through nature-based solutions and integration of advancing technologies into ecosystem management. She’s particularly excited about the potential to leverage geospatial analytics to build more dynamic and resilience land management practices in the face of our rapidly changing world.

Prior to her work at Vibrant Planet, she worked in the non-profit sector helping launch backcountry restoration projects in the Sierra Nevada. In this role, she worked closely with land managers at the US Forest Service and National Park System to plan and implement landscape level projects. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University where she took a deep dive into the integration of geospatial analysis into land management, with a special focus on terrestrial ecology at the land-water interface. At Vibrant Planet, she is excited to bring together her work experience and education to support the Resilience Team in project management and GIS analysis. When not in the office, you’re likely to find Hannah exploring her backyard in Lake Tahoe on foot or on a bike.

Luke Zachmann

Lead Data Scientist, Nature-based Solutions

Luke is an ecologist and data scientist with over a decade of experience working in academia, the non-profit sector, and industry. He has done basic research on the patterns and drivers of biodiversity, as well as applied work on wildfire, invasive species, land cover / land use, conservation planning, and phenology.

Luke has worked in forest, shrub, and grasslands across the western US, at population, community, and ecosystem scales. He brings significant spatial, statistical, and remote sensing experience to the Vibrant Planet team.

PYROLOGIX TEAM

Michael Callahan

Fire Modeling Engineer

Michael works on Pyrologix’s landscape scale fire modeling and data processing pipelines for hazard and risk data products. His experience includes cloud computing, data processing and algorithm development. He joined Pyrologix in 2021 after working in the analytical chemistry space. Before that, Michael worked fire for the U.S. Forest Service on an IA module and then a Hotshot crew.

In his free time, he can be found exploring Western Montana on a mountain bike or a set of backcountry skis.

Michael earned his BS in Management Information System from the University of Montana.

Jim Napoli

Spatial Wildfire Analyst

Jim leads Pyrologix’s LANDFIRE-based fuel mapping practice, which has become a “shadow LANDFIRE” that feeds information back to the LANDFIRE program. Jim joined Pyrologix in early 2019 after spending more than a decade with the LANDFIRE fuels team. He has 15 years of experience in wildfire research, development, and application, with 20-plus years of experience as a GIS and database programmer/analyst. His wildfire and spatial analysis expertise is grounded in previous positions with LANDFIRE and the National Park Service.

Past research work includes leveraging spatial analysis techniques to develop data processing tools for landscape- to national-scale projects; development of canopy fuels modeling techniques for LANDFIRE and coordinating the development of a multi-agency fire geospatial data layer for the Greater Yellowstone Area. He recently worked with Texas A&M Forest Service to map fuel and fire behavior across Texas at 10-m resolution.

Jim earned his BS in Geography/GIS from the Pennsylvania State University, an MS in Geography/GIS from Northern Illinois University, and an MBA from the University of Montana.

Kevin Vogler

Fire Modeling Lead

Kevin is a wildfire scientist who has enjoyed working in natural resources for over 18 years. He specializes in leveraging statistical and physics-based fire models to answer complex forest planning questions. He has also worked on projects developing methods for fuel treatment prioritization, logging and transportation cost analysis, forest growth and yield modeling, and biomass/carbon assessment. His wildfire and silvicultural modeling expertise are grounded in previous field positions, collecting data on first-order fire effects and wildfire disturbance history, as well as working on wildfire and prescribed fire assignments in nine states.

CAREERS

We’re currently taking applications for a Spatial Wildfire Analyst. Download the job description or view on LinkedIn for more information and apply online.

Vibrant Planet is committed to diversity. We encourage applicants from all cultures, races, colors, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, military, or other status protected by law to apply.

We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job, and that candidate may come from a less traditional background, but have capacity to grow into and thrive in the position after some mentoring. We do not require that you have experience with every job description task. We will consider any equivalent combination of knowledge, skills, education, and experience to meet minimum qualifications. We encourage each candidate to think broadly about their unique background and skill set and how it may relate to the role. This is important to us. We aren’t just saying this, we mean it.

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