With the New Year comes changes to the Christensen Board of Trustees. After five years of dedicated service as the Chair of the Board, Atossa Soltani will step down in compliance with Christensen’s bylaws. She will continue serving as a Christensen Trustee. Atossa, who founded Amazon Watch in 1996 and served as the organization’s Executive Director until last year, joined the Christensen Board in 2008. Since taking over as the Board Chair in 2011, Atossa has ably steered and inspired us towards a closer and more effective alignment with our mission of Backing Stewards of Biocultural Diversity. We are immeasurably grateful to
Atossa for her indefatigable commitment to Christensen.
Atossa will hand over the baton to Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, who will take over as our Board Chair in 2017. Having joined the Christensen Board in 2009, Michael brings to the Board his deep experience as a Haida leader, activist and visual artist. We are excited by Michael’s vision and zest and look forward to his Chairmanship.
We are also pleased to announce that Dr. Rodolfo Dirzo will rejoin the Christensen Board in January 2017. An expert in the ecology of tropical ecosystems, Rodolfo is the Bing Professor in Environmental Science and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He will add to the Board his wide ranging expertise as an eminent biologist and educator, and we look forward to working with him again.