The Sierra Corps Forestry Fellowship grew from a pilot idea into a regional force for forest health and workforce development in the Sierra Nevada. Seed funding from Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) through the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program, allowed the Alliance to test a model that connected emerging professionals with host sites across the range, building local capacity while training the next generation of practitioners. When pilot funding expired the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation’s Forest Futures Fund stepped in to help bridge funding while we looked for another multi-year grant. Luckily, that funding came shortly thereafter from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s (CALFIRE) Business and Workforce Development Grants Program. As we wrap up this three year grant from CALFIRE, we are proud to have completed our latest chapter of the Forestry Fellowship. Sierra Nevada Alliance has completed six years of this successful program and supported 43 fellowship terms, with many participants going on to build meaningful careers in forestry and natural resource management. That said, the challenge facing workforce development programs like ours is finding long-term sustainable funding that will ensure these successful impacts continue. Sierra Nevada Alliance will continue to advocate and seek out to this end! Stay tuned for the next chapter of this story. In the meantime, check out the accomplishments from this year’s Fellows! Each year, Forestry Fellows conclude their terms by sharing end‑of‑term presentations that highlight the projects they led, the skills they built, and the partners they served across the Sierra. These presentations are both a celebration and an opportunity to share their achievements: fellows walk us through the tangible outcomes of their work—from acres treated and workshops delivered to cone collections coordinated and students trained—while reflecting on what they learned and where they hope to go next. The Forestry Fellowship itself is a paid, early‑career forest-health training program that places fellows with agencies, nonprofits, tribes, colleges, and partners to support forest health, wildfire resilience, workforce development, and community‑based conservation, all while receiving mentoring and professional development that launch them into long‑term environmental careers.
Cecilia Ruiz – Tribal Technical & Forestry Project Coordinator
During her fellowship term, Cecilia Ruiz served as a Tribal Technical and Forestry Project Coordinator hosted by Sierra Nevada Alliance, working in close partnership with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s tribal program. She helped design, coordinate, and facilitate a series of technical assistance workshops serving more than 70 tribes across the Sierra Nevada–Cascade region, focusing on forest health, wildfire resilience, and project readiness. Cecilia supported the development of culturally grounded, relationship‑centered project delivery by aligning workshop content with tribal priorities and helping create shared resource libraries and recorded trainings that remain accessible to tribal partners.
Behind the scenes, Cecilia took on the complex administrative backbone that allows this work to scale, including drafting and executing partner contracts, managing invoicing, and tracking timelines and deliverables across Sierra Nevada Alliance, SNC, technical assistance providers, and tribal communities. She launched a communications platform and produced newsletters to share training opportunities and resources with tribes, while also contributing to grant development and submitting her first grant application to support continued tribal capacity building. Her term included deep professional growth—completing a project management certificate course, attending a three‑day grant writing workshop and tribal facilitation training, and participating in cultural burns and SNC’s in‑person tribal events—preparing her to continue pursuing a career in natural resource management and tribal partnership work in the Sierra.
Kevin Price – Instructional Support Specialist, Columbia College
Kevin Price served as an Instructional Support Specialist with Columbia College’s Forestry and Natural Resources Program in the central Sierra foothills, with a program with more than five decades of history and only one full‑time faculty member. Over his 11‑month term, Kevin supported instructors across dozens of courses and more than a hundred class sessions, providing essential field and lab support that made hands‑on learning possible for classes ranging from fire ecology and trails to hydrology and river restoration. He coordinated logistics for field excursions, including trips to active logging operations on the Stanislaus National Forest, and ensured students had safe, functional equipment for chainsaw operations, heavy equipment use, and field sampling.
Kevin also became the primary caretaker of Columbia’s extensive inventory of forestry tools and machinery, maintaining dozens of chainsaws and heavy equipment so students experienced what properly maintained professional gear should look and feel like. Under his watch, students helped treat more than a dozen acres on campus through hand thinning, piling and burning, mastication, and small demonstration broadcast burns, contributing directly to local forest health while learning practical skills. His professional development included regaining his Wilderness First Responder certification, adding Swiftwater Rescue training, joining a geospatial professional network, and beginning to teach his own forest surveying course—positioning him to continue with Columbia College beyond the fellowship and strengthening the region’s capacity to train future forest stewards.
Ruby Beauchamp – California Reforestation Pipeline Partnership Coordinator
As the California Reforestation Pipeline Partnership (RPP) Coordinator with American Forests, Ruby Beauchamp spent her term strengthening the human and technical infrastructure behind reforestation in California. She helped design and deliver four full‑length Cone Camps and two mini Cone Camps across multiple locations, bringing nearly 250 participants into the field to learn about the reforestation supply chain from cone to seedling. Drawing on five years of climbing experience, Ruby led climbing demonstrations that showed participants how foresters and climbers identify and access seed trees, and she used the Alliance’s camera to document these events and produce articles and visual content for RPP newsletters.
Ruby then moved into the heart of cone season, coordinating closely with CAL FIRE, American Forests, and the contractor Sierra Cone to manage the logistics for dozens of cone collections that yielded thousands of bushels—representing a substantial share of the contractor’s season and primarily focusing on incense cedar. She served as the main liaison between foresters and climbing crews, scheduling, tracking, and documenting work while also contributing to a cone data dashboard and presenting on cone crop conditions at RPP gatherings. She also helped plan and execute a major two‑day RPP fall gathering—complete with venue design, vendors, catering, and a CAL FIRE seed bank and nursery field tour—that brought together tribal partners, nonprofits, agencies, and private industry to deepen cross‑boundary collaboration on reforestation. Ruby’s professional development included co‑facilitating forest entrepreneurship boot camps, participating in statewide Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force meetings, and preparing for potential graduate study in restoration ecology—all of which will continue to benefit the Sierra’s reforestation workforce.
Why the Forestry Fellowship Matters
The Forestry Fellowship provides early-career forest-health practitioners with a paid job for a year, hands-on experience in environmental and natural resource work, and a program designed to guide them in building skills in forest health, stakeholder engagement, and project management – along with a stipend to allow them to pursue their professional interests. Fellows leave the program with hands-on experience—from coordinating technical assistance for tribal nations, to treating acres of overstocked forest, to organizing statewide cone collection and reforestation efforts—that positions them for long‑term careers supporting the Sierra’s forests and communities.
Even before their terms end, their work is already making a difference: they are protecting our forests, strengthening tribal access to trainings and resources, helping colleges train the next generation of forestry professionals,and expanding the reforestation pipeline that will restore burned and degraded landscapes. Each cohort builds on the last, creating a growing network of early‑career professionals who carry their Sierra‑focused experience into agencies, nonprofits, tribes, and private sector roles across the region. The result is a long‑term leadership pipeline that the Sierra Nevada will depend on as it faces accelerating wildfire, climate change, and community resilience challenges.
If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring the Forestry Fellowship program and helping more fellows launch careers in service to the Sierra Nevada, your support will directly underwrite fellow stipends, training, and host‑site projects that deliver real on‑the‑ground benefits. Sponsorship is an opportunity to invest in both immediate forest health outcomes and the long‑term stewardship workforce our region needs—ensuring that the work Cecilia, Kevin, Ruby, and their peers have started continues to grow. To learn more about sponsorship levels and benefits, please email Taylor at Taylor@sierranevadaalliance.org
Click here to view our sponsorship deck!
Watch the end-of-term presentation here!
