Collaborative Leadership Project

We have conducted oral history interviews with remarkable leaders from across Washington state representing past and present leaders from federal, tribal, state, local government; mediators and facilitators; natural resource and other private sector businesses; scientists, academics, and educators; and others.

UW Libraries is providing a permanent home for archival versions of the interviews in their Special Collections section, and is in the process of archiving the collection so that it will always be available for scholars, authors, researchers, and the general public. In the meantime, reference versions of the interviews are available on the digital online platform Internet Archive

We plan to add next generation voices to the oral history archive. That began with our UW Earthlab summer intern conducting interviews with their cohort focused on how collaborative leadership can help address the challenges they face today and in the future, such as climate change, social and environmental justice, and Puget Sound protection and restoration.

With our partners at TVW, we have created Finding Common Ground: Collaborative Leadership in Washington State (PDF), a documentary film based on the oral history interviews. Watch the film trailer.

We hosted preview screenings of the documentary during fall 2024 in Tacoma (10/17), Everett (10/28), Seattle (10/30), and Toppenish (11/4). These well-attended and well-received events included a showing of the film, followed by Q&A with the producers and interviewees.

The documentary premiered on TVW on Tuesday, November 5th at 7:00 pm Pacific, and is now available on demand. Ways to watch include broadcast and cable TV, online from TVW’s webpage, mobile app, Roku TV, and more. Learn more.

Finding Common Ground was also the focus of HistoryLink‘s annual luncheon on September 17, 2024 in Seattle, featuring a panel of people from the film. More information, including a video with highlights from the event.

Finding Common Ground will be screened at a number of upcoming events, featuring post-screening discussions with people from the film. This includes The Evergreen State College in Olympia on 2/24/25; and the 2025 NW Dispute Resolution Conference at UW Law School in Seattle on 3/28/25. Additional screenings are in the works.

The Henry M. Jackson Foundation spotlighted the film in its Winter 2024 Newsletter.

The Project is doing important, time-sensitive work to ensure that this vital knowledge about how we have come together to address complex challenges is not lost, and that both current and future generations benefit from this shared and earned wisdom. But the challenges we face in achieving conservation outcomes are complex. Leaders must have collaborative skills to successfully navigate conflict, understand interdependencies, and build relationships.

The next phase of the Collaborative Leadership Project will focus on fostering collaborative leaders. We will tap diverse expertise and engage wise project advisors and partners, in order to develop and pilot enduring curricula to train and teach the current and upcoming workforce about collaborative leadership. We will create opportunities for interaction between the next generation and their elders, exploring how collaborative approaches have solved past conflicts, and considering how they, as upcoming leaders, can adapt and apply this leadership to meet their generation’s interests and needs.

The Project will build partnerships with other organizations and co-create products that strengthen existing leadership programs. We will work with accomplished and talented partners to expand collaborative capacity among today’s and tomorrow’s natural resource leaders. Examples include:

• Training and teaching curricula to foster collaborative leadership for those currently working to resolve complex policy challenges in Puget Sound, Washington state, and the Pacific Northwest.
• Case studies of landmark collaborative processes.
• Capturing voices of the next generation. We will work to guide, mentor, and amplify voices of the next generation of leaders
• Panels/dialogues/intergenerational exchange. Current and next generation leaders can participate in multi-way knowledge exchange, in-person and via the filmed archive.
• Video profiles of important collaborative leaders from various sectors.
• Regional collaborative stories about watersheds, basins, and parts of the state that have been important to our history of collaborative policy making.
• Exploring with the Tribal Advisory Committee how best to support collaborative capacity building among and between tribal and non-tribal governments and communities.

The Program is excited to report that it will receive funding to train the next generation of collaborative policy makers for Puget Sound. The new project will build on lessons from Puget Sound’s groundbreaking history of salmon co-management and other natural resource policies.

The support comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Puget Sound Fund through the Habitat Strategic Initiative Lead (HSIL), which is a collaborative partnership between the Washington State Departments of Natural Resources (DNR) and Fish & Wildlife (DFW). The funds, designated for mid-2025 through mid-2027, support a proposal called Developing Collaborative Leaders for Puget Sound.

PSI’s partners on this effort will include the Agriculture and Forestry Education Foundation, UW College of the Environment’s EarthLab, UW Tacoma Milgard School of Business, and UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.

The Milgard School wrote about the upcoming effort in a 11/27/24 article, as did PSI in a 12/16/24 blog post.

Michael Kern serves as Project Lead and Content Co-Producer of the Collaborative Leadership Project. Michael is a Distinguished Practitioner at the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, Adjunct Associate Professor at WSU Extension, and Adunct Faculty at Seattle University; Principal of Michael Kern Consulting, LLC; and Director of Special Projects at UW’s Center for Urban Waters (CUW). In 2021, he wrapped up 12 years as Director of the William D. Ruckelshaus Center, a joint effort of WSU and UW that fosters collaborative public policy, including on natural resources. Michael has more than 30 years of experience, and a national reputation, as both a practitioner and an academic in the field of collaborative governance. He began his career at the Northwest Renewable Resources Center, working on several of the landmark collaborative processes that will be featured in this project. In addition to private practice, and leading large-scale collaborative processes for non-profit organizations, he has done so at both UW and WSU, and has been a Senior Associate at Triangle Associates, Inc.

Jennifer Huntley is serving as Content Co-Producer of the Collaborative Leadership Project. Jennifer is the host of TVW’s Washington to Washington (which follows how policy decisions in Washington, D.C. are impacting policy decisions in Washington state). Prior to her work on the show, Huntley both produced and hosted a number of election night specials for TVW. She also helped create and served as the original host for TVW’s weekly public affairs show, The Impact. Huntley spent ten years in local news as a reporter and anchor. She has covered everything from hurricanes to forest fires to the political climate of places like New Orleans, Louisiana. She was part of a team of journalists that was honored with a Peabody award for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Huntley graduated from New York University with a degree in Communications Studies.

CUW Board Chair Jim Waldo is serving as Project Advisor and Co-Executive Producer of the Collaborative Leadership Project, helping Project Lead Michael Kern build a broad partnership including tribal, state, federal, and local governments, non-governmental and private organizations, foundations and private donors, and other institutions. Jim was a Partner at Gordon Thomas Honeywell, which he joined in 1980, after working for the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He focuses his practice on complex negotiations, project permitting and implementation, representation of public and private entities in multi-party negotiations, with an emphasis on environmental issues including natural resources, energy, and tribal law. He earned his law degree from Willamette University School of Law, and his bachelor’s degree from Whitman College.

Nisqually Indian Tribe Natural Resource Director David Troutt is serving as Project Advisor and Co-Executive Producer of the Collaborative Leadership Project. David has served as the natural resources director for the Nisqually Indian Tribe since 1987. Throughout his career at the Tribe, he worked closely with the late Billy Frank, Jr. He also serves as chair of the Nisqually River Council and president of the Nisqually River Foundation, and is Chair of the Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council. David previously served on the Washington Biodiversity Council, Executive Committee of the Tri-County Response to the Endangered Species Act, Development Committee of the Shared Strategy for Puget Sound, Steering Committee for the Hatchery Reform Project, and as a member of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest Resource Advisory Committee. Mr. Troutt received his Bachelor of Science degree from the UW School of Fisheries.

CUW Science Director and Puget Sound Institute Director Joel Baker is serving as a Project Advisor for the Collaborative Leadership Project, helping Michael Kern build a broad partnership including tribal, state, federal, and local governments, non-governmental and private organizations, foundations and private donors, and other institutions. Joel holds the Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science. He earned a B.S. degree in Environmental Chemistry from SUNY Syracuse and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Minnesota. His research interests center about the transport of organic contaminants in the environment, specifically atmospheric transport and deposition, aerosol chemistry, the dynamics of contaminant transport in estuaries, and modeling the exposure and transfer of bioaccumulative chemicals in aquatic food webs. He teaches courses in water quality modeling, environmental chemistry, and quantitative methods.

Renee Radcliff Sinclair has served as president and CEO of TVW, Washington’s national award-winning public affairs network since 2015. Prior to joining TVW, Renee served as a print journalist, member of the Washington State House of Representatives, and lobbyist at the state and federal levels. She continues to serve her community through a variety of local government, policy-related appointments. TVW is providing videography and production services for the Collaborative Leadership Project.