After much cajoling I was able to get Kim Burkland to answer a few questions. This woman is busy: she's the Development Manager for Ecotrust, plays a mean handler in Ultimate, just bought a house in Portland, and was in Alaska for a week! Read on for more. 1) What's your favorite restaurant in Portland? Since moving to Portland a year ago, I have come to respect Higgins for their amazing seasonal food as well as Greg's devotion to sustainable food systems and all of his work with the Chefs Collaborative, Marine Stewardship Council, and Slow Food. More often, however, I frequent La Sierenita, a local favorite at 28th & Alberta. My favorite restaruant in Hood River, where I lived for five years, has to be Sixth Street Bisto. (Editor's note: do you know Greg personally? Will he come to my place and cook dinner? I'm sure he wants to impress the director of communications for the Brown Club of Oregon!)

2) What's your funniest Brown memory?

All of the good times at the John Street Parlour Society, a quirky gathering of talented folks in our senior-year living room, and the many other hilarious moments spent with friends.

3) Do you work in the Ecotrust building? For those who aren't familiar, it's in the Pearl District, a completely "green in the environmental sense" building...what does this entail?

I work as the Development Manager for Ecotrust, located on the 2nd floor of the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center (Editor's note: this is the scientific name for the "green" building in the Pearl). The Natural Capital Center, built in 1895 and once a thriving warehouse for the railyards, was remodeled and restored by Ecotrust and opened in September 2001. It is the first LEED Gold Redevelopment certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, with 98% of construction debris reclaimed and recycled, an ecoroof and bioswales designed to prevent stormwater runoff into the Willamette River, energy and water efficiency systems that reduce consuption by at least 1/4 to 1/3, and environmentally responsible and innovative interior materials such as FSC-certified wood, recycled paint, wheatboard cabinets, and rubber flooring from recycled tires. Ecotrust will publish a book about the redevelopment process in early 2004, and you can find out more from our website at www.ecotrust.org/NCC/ncc_redevelopment.html.

Follow up question: how often do you eat at the Hot Lips Pizza there?? Once every few weeks.

4) What's your favorite sport?

While I rowed crew at Brown and love the sport, but Ultimate Frisbee has won out since moving back to Oregon. The game is akin to soccer, with lots of running and passing the disc up the field to score, refereed entirely by the players. (Editor's note: this is the right answer).

5) How long have you lived in Oregon? What's your favorite aspect of the state?

I was born and raised in Eugene, and left the state long enough to earn my Brown diploma before moving back and settling in Hood River for five years prior to moving to Portland. Oregon's wild areas, the temperate rainforests of the Coast Range and Cascades, and fellow residents make it an ideal place to live.

6) What are particularly interesting aspects of your work? How did you get involved in it? What type of people would you recommend go into the field?

Following graduation, with B.S. in Environmental Science, I began working as an AmeriCorps volunteer with a small grassroots organization, Central Cascades Alliance, based in the Columbia River Gorge. Subsequently, I was hired as the first Executive Director and ran the organization for four years, working on wildlands planning efforts and building an environmental-science education program for local elementary students. As an Executive Director, I gained skills in fundraising and small business management, which led me to the Development position at Ecotrust.

Raising funds for Ecotrust's five bioregional program areas; native programs, fisheries, forestry, food & farms, and public education, keeps me actively engaged with program development and strategic planning. I enjoy working with and learning from our extremely talented and driven staff and board members, who have diverse and rich backgrounds in the conservation movement and business world. I am particularly interested in the balance that Ecotrust brings to conservation, by incorporating social equity and economy into our efforts to protect the ecosystems of Salmon Nation, enabling us to move beyond polarizing issues towards real-world solutions to big-picture environmental issues. For example, our forestry market connections program seeks to build a sufficient inventory of certified forestlands in the Pacific Northwest and an effective distribution system to deliver product to green building projects in Portland, Seattle, and other urban areas (www.ecotrust.org/forestry/mktconn.html).

Development work requires a dedication to your mission, first and foremost, because it is significantly easier to ask for money if it goes towards something you believe in. The job also requires a significant degree of organization and attention to detail, as well as the added dimension of understanding and incorporating the big-picture goals laid out in strategic planning efforts into your work. My interdisciplinary science background and experience in the conservation movement enables me to develop an understanding of a multitude of programmatic issues, thereby establishing a good background to build strong professional relationships with colleagues and funders. The majority of my time is spent developing and writing grant proposals as well as tracking reporting for existing grants. I also edit the Ecotrust newsletter, Taking Stock, and work with our program managers, writers, and designer to publish three issues per year (www.ecotrust.org/takingstock/Taking_Stock_Sum_03.pdf).