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
PROGRAM ASSOCIATE • CALIFORNIA
Melissa Arellano currently works as a Laboratory Technician in the Woodard bumble bee lab at the University of California, Riverside, and will begin her graduate studies there in the Fall of 2025 in pursuit of a PhD in Entomology. Melissa also continues to work half-time with Project Eleven Hundred to help extend our effort into the sprawling, bee-diverse state of California and beyond. Melissa's work with Project Eleven Hundred has catalyzed a passion for Geographic Information Systems, which she carries into all areas of her professional and academic ventures including: field work, lab work, advocacy, and conservation.
Melissa Arellano
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 Portland, Oregon. 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 recently completed his Master's of Science in ecology and pollinator conservation at Montana State University. He currently works with the nonprofit Friends of Trees to connect communities to urban nature and expand the urban forest in the Portland metro area.
Thomas Meinzen
TREASURER • OREGON
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 eleven years, at organizations with missions from youth workforce development to health education. Since 2018 she has been working for organizations with an environmental focus to better fit her passion for the natural world and joined Project Eleven Hundred in 2020 as a six-month Pollination Intern. She currently works as Field Data Technician for the Springs Stewardship Institute, based in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Ellie Stevenson
SECRETARY • ARIZONA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF BEYOND TOXICS
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.
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Lisa Arkin
Thank You
Ellie Stevenson!
Ellie earned her Masters degree at Northern Arizona University in May 2023, with her research focused on the impact of livestock grazing on pollinators’ food and nesting resources (such as diverse flowering plants and nesting materials). Ellie returned to Project Eleven Hundred to serve as our part-time Program Associate while locating a great full-time job. She has found that at the Springs Stewardship Institute (SSI) in Flagstaff, AZ. There she will combine field data collection, analysis, and management with communications with land managers in SSI’s efforts to help increase surveillance and stewardship of springs, and to conserve endangered springsnails.
Ellie first helped develop Project Eleven Hundred in 2020 when she was a six-month Pollination Intern with Mary O’Brien at Grand Canyon Trust. She joined the Board of Directors of Project Eleven Hundred when we formed as a separate organization in 2021 and will continue to serve as Board Secretary. Ellie is a Project Eleven Hundred treasure. [photo taken by Sarah Colombo]
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 our work!
Organizations to whom Project Eleven Hundred is grateful for information and collaboration include (but are not limited to):
