WHO ARE WE?
Meet Our Team
(PhD, Botany) serves pro bono as the Director of Project Eleven Hundred. For 40 years Mary has worked within environmental organizations on pesticide reform, environmental law, and conservation-based public lands management. Her masters and doctorate in Botany were pollination studies in the San Bernardino National Forest of southern California.
Mary O'Brien
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR • UTAH
Looking back, I think I have known about native bees since an early age spending summers at Lake Tahoe and then broadening my knowledge through college and career. But my real fascination with bees began in earnest in 2002, after retiring from my career as a consulting soils/watershed scientist in the Northern Rockies, when I moved to SE Utah and began gardening. I am fascinated by the bees and other pollinators that visit. I was further inspired by reading The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan and then, of course, by Mary O’Brien’s expertise, enthusiasm, and vision for Project 1100.
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Pamala Hackley
PRESIDENT • UTAH
Utah Navajo Eirene Nakai Hamilton is a continuous San Juan River valley resident. She has retired from 30 years of teaching, most of those years teaching her first language: Diné Bizaad, Navajo. Now, she devotes time to writing, gardening, ethno-botany and artistic ventures.
Eirene Hamilton
UTAH
Bruce is retired, after field work for the World Health Organization, the Forest Service, several environmental groups, and then teaching high school science for three decades. Like most Americans, he deeply appreciate the beauty and diversity of our landscape, in particular the Colorado Plateau, and seek to support efforts to protect the health of these public lands.
Bruce Hoeft
WASHINGTON
Thomas is a conservation advocate, ecologist, and composer currently based in Bozeman, Montana. In 2019 and 2020, Thomas helped launch the Project 1100 campaign to protect native bees and end public lands apiary permitting on the Colorado Plateau as a fellow with the Grand Canyon Trust. A graduate of Whitman College, Thomas has surveyed birds, plants, and pollinators as a field technician across the western/central U.S. and Costa Rica, and is now pursuing his Master's in ecology and pollinator conservation at Montana State University.
Thomas Meinzen
TREASURER • MONTANA
Monica has extensive experience with non-profit environmental and social justice organizations, and several community and family foundations. She has served as a member or advisor to the boards of many local, national, and international groups. Monica earned her BS in Political Economy of Natural Resources and MS in Wildlands Resource Science at UC Berkeley, and has published on pesticide reform and integrated pest management, environmental health, and food justice issues. She is excited to be a part of P1100, to help protect and praise native bees and their habitats, and the dedicated board of directors.
Monica Moore
CALIFORNIA
Ellie has worked in the non-profit sector for the past nine years, at organizations with missions from youth workforce development to health education. In 2018 she began working for organizations with an environmental focus to better fit her passion for the natural world, and she is thrilled to hone in on environmental science and advocacy as a part of Project Eleven Hundred.
Ellie Stevenson
SECRETARY • ARIZONA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF BEYOND TOXIC
OREGON
Lisa Arkin, Executie Director of Beyond Toxics since 2006, has expanded Project Eleven Hundred past its Colorado Plateau home base to include Oregon. Beyond Toxics is a statewide environmental justice organization with clean air, clean water, and safe places to lives for all, including native bees.
Lisa Arkin
Rachel Ruckman
DATA ASSISTANT • OREGON
A constant lover of natural balance, Rachel has degrees in environmental law and chemistry, and has been immersed in nature and agriculture since her Quaker childhood on an organic farm. In 1995 she started support work with Mary O’Brien and now happily follows her to protecting pollinators.
Diego Velasquez
RESEARCH ASSISTANT • UTAH
Diego is a conservationist, outdoors person, podcaster, photographer and potter from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. After completing his undergraduate degree in coastal Maine focusing on natural resources and ecological narratives, he now calls Moab, UT home, writing and creating podcast stories for Science Moab, KZMU and Green America. Diego is thrilled to fight for the bees and protect the unique ecosystems they make home.
We can't do it alone.
The Project Eleven Team also benefits from the help of scientists, students, volunteers, and other conservation organizations!
We are grateful for the support of foundations and donors who made possible the establishment of Project Eleven Hundred and who continue support for its work!
Organizations to whom Project Eleven Hundred is grateful for information and collaboration include (but not limited to):
