“Emerging leadership” is when an individual steps into a leadership role in the conservation field with an innovative vision for the future of collaborative conservation and the motivation, passion, and collaborative mindset to work toward that vision.
Conservation is becoming increasingly more collaborative to resolve complex cross-boundary challenges. Investing in emerging leadership, often through mentorship, builds our collective capacity to enact collaborative conservation. However, many organizations lack the ability to make the investment in mentorship, understand mentorship best practices or where to find such information, nor appropriately support emerging leadership. “We are only as strong as the depth of our bench and skill of our team,” and a collaborative approach may be appropriate to fill this capacity gap and lift all boats in the process.
To support conservation practitioners stepping into leadership positions, we are launching the Emerging Leadership Initiative to identify: best practices in mentorship, challenges and opportunities to the recruitment and retention of conservation leaders, established mentorship programs and gaps of such programs that need to be filled.
Our long term goal is to advocate for and share best practices for mentorship, increase awareness of existing mentorship programs, and enhance mentorship opportunities. For our first two years of this Initiative, we have sought out best practices, conducted interviews of mentors, mentees and mentorship program coordinators, and are currently in development of a Mentorship Toolkit to be distributed broadly across our West-wide network. We envision this Toolkit will be beneficial to those outside of our network as well.
Who We Are – The Emerging Leadership Working Group is an ongoing effort of the Western Collaborative Conservation Network (WCCN) with the goal of empowering the next generation of collaborative conservation leaders across the American West. We strive towards a vision of a future in which a broad and inclusive network of diverse leaders are working together with communities to steward Western landscapes. We host an ongoing and dynamic forum that connects emerging leaders with mentors, resources, and peers. As part of the WCCN, the reach of this working group extends across 11 western states and over 560 students and professionals engaged in collaborative conservation (see more here).
Crowd Conservation, as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has partnered with this working group to help achieve our goals to support emerging leaders.
Funding Needs – To complete the Mentorship Toolkit as the culmination of our efforts, we received support for a shared coordinator position who has worked with us over the past two years to provide the necessary capacity. Paula has helped us build relationships, conduct research, and is currently creating the Mentorship Toolkit with outreach materials. We intend to distribute these materials widely, and expand our future work.
To continue to support this initiative, we are requesting $15,000 to cover the remaining cost over the next year for our working group to
- complete the publicly available Toolkit,
- develop a paired training workshop that will be available during the WCCN’s next in-person convening in May 2026, and
- publish a peer-reviewed research paper about our findings.
Interested in supporting our work? Contact Nicole Reese to learn more.