Alma Cardenas

Alma is a technology and sustainability professional with experience leading business, sustainability, and digital transformation strategies for global enterprises. She focuses on the use of technology to accelerate enterprise sustainability, understand climate and nature risks, and identifying opportunities to adopt nature-positive sustainable business models. Since 2010, Alma led innovation programs at Microsoft for cloud adoption, financial services, sustainability strategy, carbon accounting, and responsible sourcing value chains.

Alma’s global leadership includes serving as Microsoft’s AI for Earth Global Program Manager and applying cloud and AI technologies to improve the way organizations monitor, model, and manage earth systems and ecosystems. As part of this initiative, the Microsoft “Planetary Computer” was launched, bringing the scale of the cloud to support sustainability and data-informed decision-making. She enabled cross-functional collaborations with academia, NGOs, environmental startups, and the private sector resulting in the development and deployment of more than twenty impactful environmental AI solutions in the areas of agriculture, biodiversity, climate change, and water, providing insights to enable science-informed decisions for NGOs and the private sector.

Alma has broad expertise in strategy, business management, solution, and product development life cycles as well as a wide range of technology and quality frameworks. She holds a BS in computer engineering from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, completed post-graduate courses at Stonybrook University in New York, and is a certified Sustainability Business Manager assessed by Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership, Cambridge University, UK.

Alma is passionate about the intersection of business, science, and technology applied to solve our most critical environmental challenges and influence the private sector to drive impact.

Brett Dickson, Ph.D. — President

Brett is the proud founder of CSP and serves as President of the Board of Directors as well as CEO and Chief Scientist. He is a conservation biologist, landscape and wildlife ecologist, ecological modeler, and fierce advocate for strong inference. He brings over 25 years of conservation and entrepreneurial experience to CSP as well as a wealth of leadership and corporate experience from a previous career in industrial design and product development. Brett enjoys linking his diverse professional background to the variety of science and innovation initiatives at CSP. An honorary lifetime member of the Society for Conservation Biology, he also is a former David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow and currently sits on the editorial board for the journal Conservation Biology. Brett is a Professor Emeritus with the School of Earth and Sustainability at Northern Arizona University and serves as an adjunct faculty member with the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, Reno, and as an affiliate faculty member at the University of California – Davis.

David K. Haygood

David is a retired executive from IDEO, a global innovation consultancy, where his responsibilities included serving as liaison for government and public policy programs. David previously led teams for Atari, Hexcel Composites, Raychem Corporation, and Specialized Bicycle Components and managed technical or sales organizations in the aerospace, automotive, recreation, and consumer electronics industries. Throughout his career, he has focused on executive mentoring, organizational change, innovation processes, team coaching, and design reviews. Outside of the office, David’s most memorable moments include serving as a U.S. Army combat photographer in Vietnam, leading chapel services in a maximum security prison, and swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

Rick A. Hopkins, Ph.D. — Treasurer

Rick is co-owner and Senior Conservation Biologist at Live Oak Associates, Inc. (LOA), an ecological consulting firm based in California. LOA provides public and private clients with science-based solutions to complex natural resource questions. Rick holds a Ph.D. in Wildlands Resource Ecology from University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Biology at San Jose State University. His graduate research involved a 12-year study on the spatial ecology of the cougar in the Diablo Range of California.

While Rick is a broadly trained ecologist with experience with several threatened and endangered wildlife species, he has dedicated the last 40 years to the conservation of mammalian carnivores. His research and interest with large carnivores has focused on conservation biology; population ecology; spatial ecology, and human/predator conflicts. Rick is also currently President of the Board at the non-profit Cougar Fund (www.cougarfund.org) due to his strong interest in advocating science-informed conservation for cougars.

Rick spends his free time cycling, speed skating, hiking, skiing and generally enjoying all things outdoors.

Maureen I. McCarthy, PhD – Secretary

Maureen is Administrative Faculty in the Department of Physics and Graduate Faculty in Hydrologic Sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and Research Faculty in Earth and Ecosystem Sciences at the Desert Research Institute (DRI). She is also Affiliate Faculty in the Montana Climate Office at the University of Montana W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation. Her research portfolio reflects her commitment to forging partnerships among diverse communities to anticipate and respond to the impacts of climate change on water, agriculture, and Indigenous communities. Maureen manages several large, multi-institutional, transdisciplinary research projects. These include Water for the Seasons, a collaborative research project focused on sustaining water supplies from Sierra Nevada snowpack to nourish native and non- native economic development, agriculture, and natural resources in the arid lands of the Great Basin. As Project Director for the Native Waters on Arid Lands Project, she leads a team of researchers, extension agents, and community members working to enhance the climate resilience of tribal agriculture in the Southwest, Great Basin, and Northern Rockies. Leading the ARkStorm 2.0 project, she collaborates with federal, tribal, state, and local agencies to improve their ability to predict cascading impacts from extreme winter storms in a changing climate. In addition to her academic appointments, Maureen is founder and President of McCarthy & Smith Consulting, where she advises federal agencies and private companies on national and homeland security issues, including climate threats to national security.

Before moving west, Maureen spent nearly fifteen years in Washington, DC, leading national security research, intelligence, and policy analysis programs for the Departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security. She served in the Administration of President George W. Bush as a member of the Transition Planning Office responsible for designing and establishing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She was a member of the Senior Executive Service leading homeland security research & development and intelligence programs. Prior to 9/11, Maureen was Chief Scientist for the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy, leading nuclear security and non- proliferation programs with U.S. Allies, Israel, and the Russian Federation. As the first Defense Policy Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), she advised the Secretary of Defense on compliance and verification for nuclear arms control treaties with the former Soviet Union.

Maureen holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Colorado, and a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Boston College. She is an active member of the Ecological Society of America, AAAS, Women in Nuclear, American Geophysical Union, American Chemical Society, and the Cosmos Club of Washington DC. She also served as a research scientist directing the Interface Physics Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.

Sue Meyer, JD

Sue is a natural resources and land use lawyer. She serves as the program Permitting, Mitigation, and Compliance Manager for the California High-Speed Rail Authority Rail Delivery Partner. Sue has focused her legal career on environmentally clearing, permitting, and mitigating large infrastructure projects throughout California, with an emphasis in the state and federal Endangered Species Acts and water quality protections laws, and the California Environmental Quality Act. Sue graduated from the University of Los Angeles School of Law during which time she held externships at Heal the Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council and completed the Program of Public Policy and Law with an emphasis in animal rights and natural resources law. Before her law career, Sue completed her M.A. in Philosophy at the University of North Carolina with areas of expertise in the philosophy of science and feminist theory.