The Hewlett Foundation commissioned me to interview four key leaders in the environmental field representing four separate organizations. I prepped questions and prod logistics, and later I took notes and photographs in sync. The final project deliverables included an in-depth interview of each leader, an article, photography for print and digital media to accompany the story.

The following is a written example of one out of the four (1/4) pieces in the series featuring Becca Aceto of Artemis Sportswomen.

Becca Aceto for Artemis Sportswomen

Becca Aceto is a hunter, angler, conservationist, storyteller, and all-around public lands steward living in Boise, Idaho. At 28, she’s working to conserve the wildlife and public lands that give her food, peace, and beauty while making sure that the voices coming to the conservation table are diverse, new, and readily welcomed.

Originally from the suburbs of southwest Ohio, Aceto credits her childhood as the inspiration for her conservation work today. Her parents encouraged Becca and her siblings to explore: “They would kick us out the door after school to go roam until nighttime,” she remembers fondly. The local park offered some of her first experiences outside: fishing bluegill with a simple stick or searching for snakes in the brush.

After graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in natural resources, Aceto began her journey into conservation. She worked as a naturalist at the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association, a wilderness ranger with the Payette National Forest, and then spent three years as a field biologist with the Sawtooth National Forest. In 2017, she began hunting. “One of the big turning points in my life was when I started to hunt. It added this incredible layer to what I thought was a very full life spent in the outdoors.”

October 10. 2003: The midday sun blanketed the face of Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La (El Capitan) as Emily Taylor moved up the wall with intention. With her fingertips, she pulled on tiny ledges, and she pressed her toes hard against the granite. She was high up on the Nose, a line that winds its way 3,000 feet up the prow of the southwest face.

~

WITH THOUSANDS OF FEET of air beneath her shoes, Taylor breathed in the crisp autumn air. When she topped out on the thirty-first pitch, she became the first known Black woman to ever complete the route.

Born in the 1970s at the Camp Pendleton base, Taylor was raised by her father, one of a few Black colonels in the US Marine Corps. Her father raised her with the values of "self-reliance, respect and determination," Taylor says. They moved often, relocating from Côte d'Ivoire to Okinawa, and many states in between California and Florida. "Learning to adapt to change was a way of life," Taylor states. After graduating high school, Taylor attended Winthrop University in South Carolina to study music. In her junior year, her father passed away. Suddenly Taylor found herself trying to manage her grief and school-work, as well as homecare for her grandmother, who lived states away.

The summer after her father died, Taylor signed up for a two-month-long Outward Bound course. The second week of the expedition, she and other participants learned to fashion a Swiss Seat (a rappelling harness) out of webbing. Wearing hiking boots, Taylor handily finished and cleaned a 5.10d; she reveled in experiencing the warm, red rock for the first time and her newfound strength. When she got home, she immediately bought climbing gear and started training and working at Charlotte Climbing Center.

After college, Taylor moved to Atlanta, where she worked at a climbing gym part-time as she began her career as an experiential adventure-based facilitator at a children's hospital. In 2001 a friend of Taylor's was denied entrance to the climbing gym because she was in a wheelchair. Taylor quit working at the gym that day. Soon after, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her passion for coaching ignited. She became determined to change the system, and her career as a climbing coach got its start. She helped design a harness for paraplegic climbers known as Para-Feet and created instructional and safety videos for climbers with hearing impairments.

As a Black and queer woman, Taylor is drawn to coaching climbers who, like her, are underrepresented in the climbing community. Racist, sexist and ableist comments were frequent at both the gyms and the crags she visited. In 2003 Taylor moved to Atlanta to work as a climbing coach.

There, she spent the next two decades working with Black and Brown youth climbers and athletes with disabilities, independently incorporating equity and inclusion throughout her work.

Taylor's approach with her students is always twofold: teach them how to move on the wall and how to move through society. In 2015 Taylor led a group of kids on a climbing trip in West Virginias New River Gorge. One day they went to the river to relax and found a few white men hanging out. "One of them goes, 'Who's this n--- with all these children?'" Taylor recounts. "I froze. Suddenly I had to make a choice: leave with my students, stay and go in the water, or in some other way react." The scene was all too commonplace. "But this is a reality," Taylor says. "There are places in this country where I can't go and feel safe without having white friends accompanying me."

In 2016 Taylor moved with her daughter to the Bay Area, where she founded Brown Girls Climbing, a team of all Black and Brown identifying girls. The organization began, Taylor says, because she saw "a need [to] create a safe, inclusive space for the most marginalized population in rock climbing." For Taylor, that's a space for the girls to be, and become, unapologetically themselves. It's about being Black and scaling mountains every day, she says, and showing the next generation of Black climbers, including her daughter, how to thrive.

"To be pro-Black is not to be anti-white. Coaching Black and Brown children requires a radical awareness, cultural competency and communal connection, as well as the simple ability to see and value the embodiment and vitality of Black lives," Taylor says. "What it's gonna take for this sport to move forward is for white folks to recognize that there's a lot to unpack here. There's trauma around rope, trauma around bodies. To say 'trust me and sit back' is more than a climbing routine," Taylor says. "It's about honoring the voices of my ancestors and our collective liberation."

In 2019, American Rivers commissioned me to create a series that centered people whose work centered around rivers in the United States, titled Voices from the River. Featured here is one such story and interview featuring Mary Helen Niccolini.

Mary Helen Niccolini extends her arms out, outlining Marsh Creek's meandering path from the highway bridge to where it presumably ends, unseen, at the Bay. As we walk down the trail, she points out an important fact: the restoration of Marsh Creek is not a quick project. It won't start displaying signs of completion until years down the line. When it is done, the community will enjoy the fruits of a beautifully restored creek, and the native flora and fauna will benefit from thriving, native habitat. The paved trail that parallels the creek will also connect Brentwood to Big Break Shoreline, a six-mile path for the community to explore.

However, as any ecologist knows well, habitat restoration – and particularly creek restoration – takes time. Time from nature, and hard dedication from folks like Mary Helen who are committed to projects that go beyond the ephemeral and invest in the longterm. Luckily, it’s this component that has driven Nicolini throughout her career. Her passion lies in connecting science with people, and using practical solutions that will benefit both the environment and the local community that depends on it.

Nicolini is composed and brilliant; a scientist and aquatic biologist who is precise, cheerful, and passionate. She lights up when she begins chatting about her love for the ocean and science, as she does recalling some of her first memories outdoors. As a child, she was very aware of the changing seasons. How fall’s warmth diminished into winter and how the crops could no longer grow. Through her family, she recounts fishing and spending a significant amount of time in Santa Cruz, at the ocean. Stunningly, at only four and during her first experience in the water, she nearly drowned. 

“A wave caught me and tumbled me in,” she says happily. “My parents thought I’d be scared of the ocean for life. I was startled but I actually loved it.”

A 2nd-generation Mexican American, Mary Helen was raised in Merced, the youngest of 7. Her closest sibling still 9 years apart. Her father was a foreman on an almond ranch, and her mother a homemaker who worked during the summers, packing tomatoes. Beyond, her grandparents were migrant farmworkers who moved with the seasons and the crops, from Palm Springs to Santa Rosa. They immigrated to the United States in the 1910s and, through their dedication to the land and environment, laid the foundations for Mary Helen's lifelong work and approach. 

At 59, Mary Helen’s path is familiar to many women of color in STEM, especially considering that she went to college in the late 70s. She recalls being the “only one” studying Marine Biology at UC Santa Cruz, i.e. the only Mexican-American woman in her major, and the offhand comments that sometimes came with it. In one of her most vivid experiences, she remembers being approached at a festival and asked why she wasn't with her own people. 

And yet, while her presence in the programs was sometimes seen as an anomaly, she didn't think so. "I didn't grow up seeing myself isolated from nature. I saw that I was a part of it,” says Nicolini. Indeed, her connection to the land from an early age resonates throughout her work, especially in how she favors projects with big scope and longstanding commitment. In other words, projects with positive impacts that might not even come to fruition in her own lifetime. 

When you look at Mary Helen’s repertoire of work, it’s clear that her approach is not only holistic — it’s deep-rooted. It seeks to positively affect the lives of people and wildlife through science.

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she went on to study the effects of stormwater runoff on aquatic life for her Master’s. She then looked to become more involved with people and science, and joined the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. The goal there was to develop a low tech method of aquaculture that might support the livelihood of local fishermen. Afterward, she worked throughout the Bay Area as an aquatic toxicologist, as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and most recently worked with Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed, which led her to her current job today.

Presently, Mary Helen works as a contracted Aquatic Ecologist for American Rivers, helping lead the design and monitoring of Marsh Creek. As part of her position, she leads student and volunteer groups – understanding that effective restoration projects must also mean involving the community and the next generation of stewards.

Through the student groups, who are primarily students of color, she is able to teach them about the value of creeks and restoration, while providing hands on experience that could influence their own trajectory later. In the fall, Chinook Salmon run through the creek, so the students are able to directly learn how healthy habitat lead to healthy wildlife. The investment ends up being twofold: both in the creek and in the students who might one day become an aquatic biologist like Mary Helen. 

It means the most to know that the work she’s doing will positively affect the local community for years to come. In considering the future, it’s also deeply important that she’s working to impact the environment positively, and leave a lasting impression for her daughter, who’s currently in high school.

“After all, that’s where it all comes back. Being able to leave something that’s going to be around for a long time.”

I’ve worked alongside Patagonia for many years and many, many projects. From staff global photo editor to consultant to writing, photo, and this project here: Creative direction and photo editor for the launch of the Patagonia Kids Instagram account, a project years in the making.

Creative direction, branding and identity designer, involving social graphics, visual identify for the web design, and minor motion design elements for social, as well. Assets were picked up by media and other outlets. Outcome: over $30,000 raised in only two months and re-distributed to Black LGBTQ+ youth across the country.

Sample slides from the Instagram posts.

I first got in touch with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition in 2019 while on assignment for an entirely different project. What began as an interview of one leader eventually evolved into a long-lasting work relationship, where I was entrusted to build the Coalition’s media gallery and meet more of their leaders and people. The relationship wove in many different projects and experiences out in Bears Ears. I was honored to be a part of it.