Michael Beasley, B.A.
Board President
Retired USFS Forest Fire Chief, NPS Prescribed Fire Manager
Home base: Farmington, AR
Mike is originally from Northwest Arkansas and attended Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry. He received his first wildland firefighting “red card” as a volunteer in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1984. His first land management post was as a Park Naturalist at Mt. Rainier National Park in 1987. He was on an NPS hotshot crew and started one of the first NPS Fire Use Modules, acting as its Module Leader from 1995 through 1998. Mike was the Deputy Fire Chief while working eight years at Yosemite National Park between 2001 and 2009. In 2009 Mike moved to Humboldt County and served as Deputy Fire Chief of the Six Rivers National Forest and finished his career at the end of 2015 as the Interagency Fire Chief for the Inyo National Forest and Bishop BLM in Bishop, CA. Mike was a Founding Board Member of FUSEE and continues to assist with large fire management through his work as a Fire Behavior Analyst on one of California’s incident management teams. He splits his time between his family home in the Ozarks, rural Northern California and Eugene, OR.
Megan Bolten, B.A.
Board Vice President
Wildland Firefighter, Oregon Woods
Home Base: Eugene, OR
Megan is a student of fire and certified FFT2 wildland firefighter. She has years of experience working for and with various nonprofit organizations committed to ecological stewardship, forest defense, water defense, and climate action, all of which played a huge role in her decision to move to Eugene, Oregon from Virginia in 2020. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and years of experience in nonprofit board operations and governance. Her engagement with fire continues to deepen and evolve, and her aim is to help improve and support the use of safe, ecological, and cultural fire efforts wherever and however possible.
Tom Ribe, M.A.
Board Secretary
Owner-Operator, Southwest Adventures
Home base: Santa Fe, NM
Tom Ribe is a long-time public land and national park advocated based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has his MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon and has worked in interpretation and fire for the National Park Service at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Yosemite, and Bandelier National Monument. He is author of Inferno by Committee, a book on the Los Alamos (Cerro Grande) Fire that was published June 2010. He is Executive Director of Caldera Action, advocating for National Park Service management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve and works on a variety of issues related to national parks and personal health.
Karen Wood, B.S., C.P.A.
Board Treasurer
Senior Director of Finance, Manchester Bidwell Corporation
Home base: Pittsburgh, PA
Karen has served in many roles in the environmental and nonprofit communities in both Oregon and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she currently resides. Karen's work as a grassroots ancient forest protection activist in the 80's and 90's included advocacy and outreach on the necessity of wildfire in western forests and the damage caused by aggressive fire suppression and salvage logging operations. A bookkeeper specializing in nonprofits by trade, Karen served as board member or treasurer for several nonprofit organizations that were key participants in the movement to stop clearcutting of ancient forests. She continued those roles with several conservation organizations in the Pittsburgh area, where she entered public accounting and later served as a shared CFO for several environmental nonprofits where she earned the "CFO of the Year" award in 2019 from the Pittsburgh Business Times. Karen now works as the Senior Director of Finance for Manchester Bidwell Corporation, the parent organization of four other affiliated nonprofits. Karen is looking forward to using her experience with forest conservation and nonprofit finance to help FUSEE grow and reach its mission.
Rich Fairbanks, M.S.
Board Member
Retired U.S. Forest Service fire planner, hotshot crew foreman
Home base: Jacksonville, OR
Rich has held various positions in the fire organization, including Interagency Hotshot Crew Foreman, BD Crew Foreman, Division Supervisor, Complex Burn Boss, and others. Retiring after a 32-year career with the Forest Service, Rich worked 6 years for The Wilderness Society, leading their California fire program. He currently owns a small forest management company. He studied fire behavior as a graduate student (UW fire science program 1979-80). Rich is a certified silviculturist and holds a Master’s degree. He and his wife own some mixed conifer forest in the Applegate, where they do quite a bit of controlled burning.
Joseph Fox, Ph.D., J.D.
Board Member
Retired USFS Smokejumper
Home base: McCall, ID
Joe served as a wildland firefighter for the USFS for 25 years, the majority of that as a smokejumper out of the McCall base. He was a Regent's Fellow at U.C. Berkeley where he earned a Ph.D. in forest entomology. He later earned a law degree from the University of Idaho Law School. Joe is a writer, cartoonist, urban farmer, outdoor adventurer, and fire philosophizer.
Jessica Conrad, B.A.
Board Member
Restoration Crew Member, Karuk Tribe Dept. of Natural Resources
Home base: Somes Bar, CA
Jessica Conrad grew up in northern California along the Klamath and Salmon rivers within what is now known as the Klamath National Forest that is the homelands of her people, the Karuk Tribe. The Karuk have a fire-dependent culture with cultural burning practices that since time immemorial have maintained rich habitats for plants and animals that her people consider to be kin. Jessica and her people hold an identity as "fix the world people," an identity that is manifested in the annual world renewal ceremony (Pikyavish) and their daily interactions with the environment. Jessica and her family depend heavily on the land for food and other resources, and continue to carry out traditional practices of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Jessica is a graduate of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon, and currently works for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources doing research and restoration projects that are helping restore elk habitat.
Alex Froom, M.Div, M.S.W.
Board Member
Owner-Operator, Watershed Row
Home Base: Klamath Falls, Oregon
Alex is a theologian, social worker, and nonprofit leader who works at the intersection of food, land, and community. He holds a Master of Divinity and Master of Social Work from Boston University. He and his wife, Malu, are creating Watershed Row—a vibrant pedestrian oriented block in downtown Klamath Falls that introduces people to local food, art and nature. Alex worked in community organizing, nonprofit development, youth development, and food systems in New England, the American Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. Alex deeply wants to help create a resilient local food web that is good for people, the land, and all our plant and animal relatives. A lover of mountains, trees, and water, he is thrilled to be a part of FUSEE's work in the seismic human-ecological shift taking place in our lands and communities. For leisure, when he isn’t in his garden with Malu and their son, he hikes, bikes, skis, and paddles.
Meredith Jacobson, PhD Student
Board Member
Home base: Eugene, OR
Meredith is a PhD student at the University of Oregon studying social and cultural dimensions of land management. As a white non-Native person, she thinks about the politics of allyship and settler colonialism in fire management. She is a Research Associate with the FireGeneration Collaborative, a volunteer with Willamette Valley Fire Collaboration, and a teacher seeking to engage students in enacting a more socially and ecologically just world. She has a B.S. in Forestry from UC Berkeley and an M.S. in Forest Ecosystems and Society from Oregon State University. Before graduate school, she was a Forestry Aide for CAL FIRE and an Environmental Educator with the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. During her graduate studies, she has worked on applied social science research in collaboration with the InterTribal Timber Council, the Ecosystem Workforce Program, and the Watershed Research and Training Center.