Sightline is governed by a Board of Directors composed of community leaders from around the Northwest. They volunteer their time to make sure Sightline is as successful as possible. They serve renewable three-year terms and hold ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibility for Sightline.
Trustees help ensure Sightline’s institutional strength, serving renewable one-year terms on committees dedicated to Sightline’s finances, fundraising, and governance.
John Atcheson of Seattle is an entrepreneur and advisor in the field of Sustainable Technology. John currently serves as Vice President of Getaround, an online marketplace for peer-to-peer car sharing. John has served as founder/CEO of several media-related startups, including SparkWords, Ads.com, and MusicNet, the first interactive music service. John also served as vice president and general manager of Media Publishing at RealNetworks (RNWK), a role that involved the oversight of all media-related Web sites, the negotiation of strategic alliances with media partners such as NPR, Warner Bros, and Sony, and the acquisition of media properties such as Film.com. Earlier in his career, John served on the early executive staffs of both Digidesign (now part of Avid) and Macromind (now part of Adobe). John has appeared as a section leader and occasional soloist with the Seattle Symphony Chorale, and has served as a board member of the Seattle Symphony. He received his BA from Brown University and his MBA from Stanford Business School.
Rashmir Balasubramaniam, chair of Sightline's Diversity Committee, is the Founder and CEO of Nsansa, a social enterprise that advises and coaches entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs on innovation, creativity and market-based strategies for realizing sustainable, system-wide social impact. Rashmir is an Adjunct Faculty member of the Foster School of Business, University of Washington and Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where she teaches classes on Harnessing Business and Markets to Address Poverty and Social Justice & Business.
Prior to this, Rashmir spent 5 years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she led a cross-sector initiative on private sector engagement and market development, and drove strategy and built and managed a diverse portfolio of grants for the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Program. With 15 years of experience across the public and private sectors, Rashmir has led and managed a variety of cross-sectoral development projects, including work on malaria, reproductive health, human resources for health, and institutional development. She has worked with a broad array of development organizations including iScale – Innovations for Scaling Impact, TechnoServe, the World Bank, and International Planned Parenthood Federation. Her work has focused mainly on Africa, but also includes projects in Asia and Latin America. Prior to pursuing her interests in International Development, Rashmir worked in investment banking and finance. Rashmir holds an MBA from Yale University, a Post Graduate Diploma in Development Studies from the University of London, and a BSc in mathematics and computer science from the University of Durham.
Susan Balbas resides with her family on the Snake River in southwestern Idaho, as well as in Seattle, Washington. She is a native of the western United States, is of Native ancestry, Cherokee and Yaqui Nations; and is also of Northern Spain and European heritage. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Science in Teaching, History. She is the co-founder and director of Tierra Madre Fund, a Native women's fund focusing on sustainable community development, food sovereignty, and support of artists and culture keepers. Susan is a development consultant to community-based and philanthropic organizations and Tribes. She has held various management positions in the corporate and non profit sectors, and has served on committees and boards locally and nationally.
Serena Cruz Walsh co-founded Albina Construction Company LLC to develop, build and renovate affordable housing. Albina's projects incorporate high levels of energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable building practices. Before joining the private sector, Serena was elected to serve as a Multnomah County Commissioner. Now she satisfies her urge for public service through nonprofits: she serves on the Boards of the Latino Network, Transition Projects and NOW Oregon; and she also serves as a Trustee for Sightline. She earned her BA at Lewis & Clark College, her MPP at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and her JD at the University of California at Berkeley. Serena was born in Seattle, raised in Eugene and now lives in Northeast Portland with her husband/business partner, Tom, and their adorable daughter.
Alan Durning, executive director, founded Northwest Environment Watch in 1993, which became Sightline Institute in 2006. Alan’s current topics of focus include Sightline’s Making Sustainability Legal series and governance reform. He has also written in recent years about car-less living, bike friendliness, electric bikes, and climate fairness. Durning has written or contributed to nine Sightline books, including Sightline’s Cascadia Scorecard 2007, Tax Shift, Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, and the award-winning This Place on Earth: Home and Practice of Permanence. Prior to founding Sightline, Durning was a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute. There, he studied the human dimensions of sustainability and wrote the award-winning book How Much Is Enough?, as well as chapters in seven State of the World reports and articles in hundreds of other publications. A sought-after speaker, he has lectured at the White House, major universities, and conferences on five continents. In addition to his passion for sustainability, Alan is a music fiend and a lover of outdoor pursuits, especially mountaineering and cycling. His three children are in college or beyond now, so he is free to pursue his passions even more of the time. Read Alan’s full bio, find his latest blog posts here, and email him at alan [at] sightline [dot] org.
Mary Fellows has been a bookseller at Annie Bloom’s Books, an independent book store in Portland, for nearly 20 years. She is a grandmother, an avid bike commuter, a member of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and a board member of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Mary has also been a SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) volunteer for the past 10 years. Her previous experiences include serving as President of the ACLU of Oregon and as staff to the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives and to the Multnomah County Executive.
Jeanette Henderson serves as Sightline's board chair. She was formerly treasurer and chair of the board finance and audit committee. She is the Director of Real Estate at the University of Washington where she leads an office of real estate professionals conducting real property transactions, asset and project management, and finance and accounting services for UW campuses, medical centers, research field stations, biological preserves and various international locations. She serves on the UW climate action planning committee, and is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and also serves on the executive committee of the Urban Land Institute in Seattle. She is a member of Sightline’s Cascadia Stewards Council and participated as a trustee on the finance and audit committee before becoming a Sightline Director. Jeanette grew up in Oregon, and is a graduate of Washington State University and University of Washington School of Law.
Wayne Lei, chair of Sightline's Governance Committee, has led Research and Development at Portland General Electric for over 10 years. In this role, he has issued Technical Basis Documents and other white papers on environmental, social and technical issues affecting the Company. Most recently he has led the technical effort to subsitute biomass for coal at PGE's Boardman Power Plant. Prior to this, Lei was Director of Environmental Policy at PGE and, before that he served in the nuclear industry for ten years. He is currently a Board member for the Resource Innovation Group, the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board and he chairs the International Sustainable Foundation. Mr. Lei also serves on the Reactor Safety Committee for Reed College. He is a member of the Advisory Committee for ABET accreditation to the Renewable Energy Engineering program at the Oregon Institute of Technology as well as serving on the Science Industry Advisory Council to Portland State University. Mr. Lei holds a doctorate in Environmental Health Sciences specializing in Radiation Hygiene from New York University, as well as degrees from Oregon State University and Oberlin College. Since 1986, he has been certified in the comprehensive practice of Health Physics by the American Board of Health Physics. Wayne has two grown children and resides in Portland with his wife Mary.
Gordon Price of Vancouver, BC, is Director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. He served as City Councillor from 1986 to 2002, and sat on the boards of the Greater Vancouver Regional District and TransLink, the regional transportation authority. In 2009, he was appointed by the Mayor of Vancouver as a member of the “Greenest City Action Team” and also sits on the executive committees of local chapters of the Urban Land Institute and Lambda Alpha. Gordon lectures and writes widely on urban development, design, and transportation issues in Canada and the US. He publishes an e-mail newsletter, Price Tags, and his blog is at pricetags.wordpress.com.
Kamala Rao has lived the majority of her life throughout the Cascadia region. She grew up in Washington and Alaska, did her undergraduate degree in Oregon and her graduate degree in urban planning in British Columbia. Kamala also serves on the board of the People’s Waterfront Coalition and has been active in environmental issues throughout the Cascadia region for many years. Her urban planning career, which has included both private and public sector work, has been focused on working with communities to create a more sustainable transportation system. She and her husband Bryn Davidson currently live in Vancouver, BC in a 400-square-foot condo, which was designed by Bryn, a LEED-accredited designer, to be a model of efficiency and small footprint living. Kamala currently works for TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s regional transportation authority. Her background also includes several years working for a communications firm.
Mark Trahant is an independent journalist. He writes a weekly column, posts often on Twitter (including daily news poems). Trahant was recently a Kaiser Media Fellow and is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Mark is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribe and a former president of the Native American Journalists Association. He is the author of The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, about Henry Jackson, Forrest Gerard and the campaign for American Indian self-determination. He lives in Fort Hall, Idaho.
Christopher Troth chairs Sightline’s Finance and Audit Committee and serves as Sightline's Treasurer. A resident of Seattle since 1993, he is a private investor and occasional restorer of old houses. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College.
Kristin Martinez is a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past 2 decades working with new ventures as an entrepreneur, investor, director and advisor. She is the founder of Sound Point Ventures, LLC, a venture development and management company operating in Seattle, Washington and Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1998. Through Sound Point, Kristin co-founded Angels with Attitude, the first active angel fund focused on sustainability. She was a founding member of Seraph Capital, a Seattle angel network for women, served as an Advisory Board member of the University of Washington chapter of Net Impact, and as a University of Washington MBA Program Mentor. Kristin is currently a director of Oscilla Power, and an advisor to OneEnergyRenewables, both Seattle startups.
Rodney L. Brown, Jr. is a partner with Cascadia Law Group, one of the leading environmental law firms in the Pacific Northwest. He works on many environmental issues, ranging from pollution control regulations to natural resource management. He was the principal author of Washington’s Superfund law, and he has served on many governmental commissions, including those that led to the creation of the Growth Management Act and the Regulatory Reform Act. He most recently served on the Governor’s Climate Action Team and the Washington State Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation.
Mark Cliggett has been a Seattle resident for nearly 30 years, and associated with Sightline since its early days. Mark is a long time Microsoft employee, currently serving as Director of Test in the Windows Embedded Business. Mark was a co-founder of Bright Water School (a K-8 elementary school in Seattle) and Angels with Attitude (a hybrid venture/angel fund focused on sustainability). For fun, Mark does long runs and bike rides.
David Yaden of Lake Oswego, Oregon, is former energy director for the state of Oregon and serves as chair of Sightline's board governance committee. He is semi-retired from 30 years varied experience in the public and private sectors but does occasional consulting on large-scale strategies for complex problems, such as reforming school finance and the tax structure in Oregon. As an independent consultant for the last decade, Dave developed strategic plans for the Oregon State System of Higher Education and for Tri-Met. In 1991, he left his position as Director of Oregon's Department of Energy, which he had held since 1987, to spend a year advising newly-free Czech and Slovak national and local governments on management of environmental problems. Other experience includes work as manager of corporate planning for a Fortune-500 company, special assistant to a US Secretary of Transportation, chief of staff to a US Congressman, and manager of his own public opinion analysis firm.