Women from nine Latin American countries met Friday at Sylvan Dale Ranch in Loveland with female leaders of conservation groups in Colorado to discuss how to strengthen the role of women in the field.
The Center for Protected Area Management at CSU is hosting a 10-day training for women in Latin American conservation organizations.
The 17 women were chosen from a list of 70 applicants, and work for NGOs, government organizations and park services in their respective countries. All have leadership positions in their organizations.
The training seeks to equip women with skills that will help them be more effective leaders and to build community among women who work in the conservation industry.
At Friday’s panel, the group heard from Darla Sidles, the first female superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park; Meegan Flenniken, a land conservation manager at Larimer County; Jacqueline Kozak Thiel, chief sustainability officer for the city of Fort Collins; Canyon Lakes District Ranger Katie Donahue; and Lara Peterson, the Russia, Europe and Near Asia Program Coordinator at USDA Forest Service.
With the help of a translator, the women discussed issues including how to balance having a career with raising children, how to succeed in a male-dominated workplace, how to hire a diverse range of candidates and how to help other women succeed in the industry.
The conservation industry is a male-dominated field, though it has made significant strides in reaching gender parity in the past several decades. Each woman had her own story of facing discrimination in the workplace and how she had subsequently worked to make the field more equitable.
Donahue spoke about the challenges of working as a woman in the Forest Service and said that in a previous job she didn’t gain respect from her crew until she showed up at a dig line two months pregnant.
Kozak Thiel shared a story of going up to the podium at a Fort Collins City Council meeting to answer a question about climate change with her baby strapped to her chest. She learned later that someone in the city administration was unhappy with her decision, but she decided to continue to bring her child to events to show that being a mother wasn’t incompatible with having a career.
All of the speakers stressed the importance of having good mentors — male or female — and the importance of mentoring other women in turn. Donahue said that she makes a point of spending extra time with her female firefighters, because she knows how isolating being one of the only women on a team can be.
Sidles said that when she joined the Park Service, there were almost no other women. She was lucky to have some very supportive male mentors, but at times had to “act like a man” to gain respect. She encouraged the participants not to be afraid to be assertive in the workplace, and to have confidence in their abilities.
“You are just as smart if not smarter than anybody else in the room,” she said.
Many of the women in attendance were some of the only women in their organizations, and Sidles thanked them for being trailblazers in their countries.
“You all inspire me,” she said.
Marisi Lopez, director of public relations in the Corrientes, Argentina, office of Tompkins Conservation, said that the panel inspired her to see that women could be in high positions of responsibility without having to compromise who they were. She appreciated hearing from other women about how they tackled challenges in their workplaces.
Lesly Aldana, the Mexico project director for Rainforest Alliance, said that the opportunity to meet other women in the field and learn from each other has been wonderful. Aldana previously received a master’s degree in conservation leadership from CSU but said that the program had not discussed gender issues very much. With this training, she said that she has learned a lot that she can take back to her work in Mexico to try to improve gender equality.
Rosa Maria Vidal Rodriguez, senior adviser at the Center for Protected Area Management, spent two years planning the program after the center saw a need to have a women-specific program. They now hope to have the program yearly. She said that so far, the program has been a great success.
“It’s a dream to see all these women here,” she said.