Directors & Advisors

Shaw L. Canale, Chair, has spent her career in community-grounded and values-centric economic investment. Before retiring in 2014 to Whidbey Island, Washington, she spent four years as CEO of Mountain BizWorks, a small nonprofit in Asheville, North Carolina, that provides training and capital to small businesses located in the state’s rural mountain communities. From 1997 to 2007, she was Executive Director and CEO of Cascadia Revolving Fund, a certified double-bottom-line community development financial institution (CDFI) fueling urban and rural entrepreneurs in Washington and Oregon with capital and support. Beginning in 2006, Shaw initiated and led the two-year-long merger of Cascadia Revolving Fund with ShoreBank Enterprise Pacific. She then served as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the merged company, ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia, from 2007 to 2009. And in 2007, she founded The Shaw Company to offer management consulting services to nonprofits and CDFIs. Her early career was in retail banking, primarily in the Seattle area, after having attended the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Alan Durning, executive director, founded Northwest Environment Watch in 1993, which became Sightline Institute in 2006. Alan’s current topics of focus include housing affordability and democracy reform. He has also written about parking, Making Sustainability Legal, car-free living, bike-friendliness, electric bikes, and climate fairness. Alan has written or contributed to nine Sightline books, including Unlocking Home: Three Keys to Affordable Communities, 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, Alan 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.

Raymond Fung has held roles in local government for more than 25 years and recently retired from his position as Director, Engineering & Transportation for the District of West Vancouver, BC, Canada. With a passion for sustainability initiatives at the municipal level, Ray has led innovative projects related to water conservation, solid waste diversion, active transportation and district energy. In the past, he has also worked in consulting engineering, and from 1999 to 2002 he served as an international development manager in China for a non-governmental organization. Graduating from Civil Engineering at University of British Columbia in 1987, Ray later went on to complete his Master of Engineering degree in 1996. He is also a director of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC and an elder at Hillside Baptist Church. Ray lives in North Vancouver with his wife and has two children studying in university.

Jeanette Henderson is the Executive Director of Real Estate at the University of Washington, with 25+ years of real estate management there, and prior to that several years as in-house legal counsel for a Seattle-based developer. She is president of Pacific Real Estate Institute and past president of the Association of University Real Estate Officials. Jeanette is a graduate of University of Washington School of Law and Washington State University. She grew up in Oregon, lives in Seattle and spends some of her free time playing old time string band music, gardening, cooking, traveling, biking, and birding.

Wayne Lei retired recently as Director of Research and Development at Portland General Electric (PGE)—a function he lead for over 10 years. In this role, he issued Technical Basis Documents and other white papers on environmental, social and technical issues affecting the company. Notable projects included installation of a grid-scale, 5 MW, 1.25 MW-hr lithium ion battery in Salem and obtaining 5,000 tons of torrefied, renewable biomass for a successful test burn to replace the coal used 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 and still serves on the Reactor Operations Committee at Reed College. In the past, he chaired the Industry Advisory Committee for ABET accreditation to the Renewable Energy Systems degree at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Currently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Oregon Torrefaction, LLC. 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.

Nolan Lienhart is known for his strategic ability to bring clients together with community stakeholders and the diverse disciplines critical to the planning of major district-scale developments as the Principal and Director of Planning & Urban Design at ZGF Architects in Portland. Over the past decade, Nolan has honed his expertise in transit-oriented development, master planning, and urban design, which includes riverfront development, mixed-use neighborhoods, and campus planning. His experience includes work for Oregon Health & Science University, Stanford University, Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Prosper Portland, TriMet, and Denver’s Regional Transportation District. Nolan served as faculty with the Rose Center for Public Leadership in 2017 and 2018, co-chairing panels of experts advising mayors of San Jose and Salt Lake City. He has served as Board President for 1000 Friends of Oregon and was appointed to serve on the Oregon Capitol Planning Commission by Governor Kate Brown. He is also on the Board of Governors for the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Simka Marshall is a member of the Ahousaht First Nation, located off the coast of Tofino, British Columbia. Simka is experienced in political organizing, community outreach, and communications. Simka has worked a number of political campaigns and spent years organizing on post-secondary campuses across British Columbia. Growing up on Vancouver Island, she was raised in her teachings and mentored by the matriarchs in her family. She is currently a director in the office of BC Premier David Eby.

John McGarry, Treasurer, moved to Seattle several years ago after a 25-year career as an investment banker in New York, Hong Kong, and Chicago. His most recent role was as a senior banker raising capital for US companies in the Healthcare, Consumer Products, and Retail industries. John was a Fellow in the Northwest Conservation Philanthropy Fellowship program in 2015 and is a member of E8, a clean-tech angel investor group. He is a founding board member the Clean Energy Transition Institute, a non-profit focused on decarbonization in the Pacific Northwest. Outside of his environmental pursuits, John has a keen interest in music and the arts. He is a former chair of the board and Life Trustee of Interlochen Center for the Arts, an arts educational and cultural institution located in Michigan. John holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA in Economics from Northwestern University. He is an avid cyclist, skier, and hiker.

Jason Pretty Boy is a Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Tribal member from the Rock Creek District on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North and South Dakota. He was raised in the southern Idaho farm area, with the nearest town being Declo. Growing up on the ranch imbued him with the understanding that this is the only planet we have at this time, and if we don’t work to practice sustainable methods, we will render it unlivable. He has an AAS in Tribal Management/Business Management from United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota, and a Bachelors in Political Science with an emphasis in Public Policy from Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. His work experience ranges from community radio stations to non-profit organizations, sitting at the crossroads of economy and ecology. Jason is married to a wonderful Idaho transplant from Michigan named Sydney. They have three daughters, ranging in age from 5 to 23, and welcomed three grandchildren.

Ruchi Sadhir is the Associate Director for Strategic Engagement & Development at the Oregon Department of Energy. She most recently served as Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s energy and climate change policy advisor, where she participated in UN Climate Change Conferences in Paris and Bonn and several clean energy legislative accomplishments during the 2015, 2016, and 2017 sessions such as coal-to-clean, clean fuels, and an electric vehicle rebate. Ruchi also served as senior policy advisor at the Oregon Public Utility Commission, working on a range of matters related to the energy industry, transition to cleaner sources of energy, and climate change. Before her work in Oregon, Ruchi lived in Washington, D.C. where she helped lead development of renewable energy and electric transmission siting and permitting policy in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Interior, staffed the Obama Administration’s “Rapid Response Team for Transmission,” and was a law clerk at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Ruchi holds an L.L.M. in Environmental Law from the George Washington University Law School, a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and a B.S. from the University of Michigan College of Engineering. She enjoys traveling and hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and dog.

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.