Staff Members
Joseph T. O'Connor
Managing Editor
Joseph T. O’Connor has an extensive background in multimedia storytelling including writing, editing, video broadcast and investigative journalism. He most recently served as Editor-in-Chief for Mountain Outlaw magazine and the Explore Big Sky newspaper in Big Sky, Montana. Joe's work has appeared in several publications from the East Coast to California, including Newsweek, CNN and Skiing magazine, among others. He moved to Montana in 2012 after taking graduate journalism courses at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sarah DeOpsomer
Development and Executive Assistant
Having grown up in East Anglia, England—a region which prides itself on beautiful countryside and its famous landscape painters—Sarah DeOpsomer has long been interested in national parks, wildlife, conservation and environmental protection. A graduate of MSU, she has lived in Bozeman for more than 23 years and has worked for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Yellowstone Park Foundation and more recently the Bozeman Public Library Foundation. When not at her desk, she is either hiking, riding, kayaking, reading or painting.Board Members
Hank Perry
Chair
Hank Perry is a resident of Teton Valley, Idaho and Denver, Colorado - where he thrives on being outside, doing just about anything with his dog Ranger. His passion about wild places started young, usually with a camera, growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico before attending California public schools and graduating from UC Berkeley. His career has been spent forming and building three large San Francisco bay area real estate companies. When he was able, Hank traveled many of the National Parks in the U.S. focusing on Greater Yellowstone and Alaska before building his home in Teton Valley, Idaho; taking some award-winning photos along the way. As he expanded his photography to Africa, the Arctic and Antarctic, he grew his knowledge and awareness of international environmental issues and approaches of the local people. Recently, Hank was involved with the Save Mount Diablo organization in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Joanne Dornan
Vice Chair
Joanne Dornan came to the Greater Yellowstone as a seasonal park ranger in Grand Teton National Park in 1971 and has—more or less—never left. Her community connections in Jackson Hole run deep. A life-long fascination in animal behavior led her to Masters Degrees in Conservation Biology and Clinical Psychology. Some of Joanne's writing is featured in her close friend Terry Tempest Williams' new critically-acclaimed book, "Erosion: Essays of Undoing." Joanne lives and works in Bozeman Montana.
David Cook
Board Member
David Cook lives among the mountains and creeks of Big Sky, Montana, with his wife and young son. Countless backcountry adventures over the years have demonstrated how important it is to “leave camp better than you found it” and he is applying that principle to Big Sky and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem at large. Recently, he donated a conservation easement on land adjacent to the Gallatin National Forest. To provide for his family, David tells stories with data that uncover opportunities to build more useful products for millions of people. Technology influences all of our lives, and David hopes to leverage it to protect the uniqueness of the GYE. When not working, you can find David quietly searching for views, alpine lakes, wildlife, and powder stashes in the mountains around Greater Yellowstone.
Dr. Shane Doyle
Treasurer
Shane Doyle, Ed.D, is a Crow tribal member who grew up in Crow Agency, Montana and currently resides in Bozeman. He is involved in many educational interests, causes and organizations. A singer of Northern Plains tribal style of music for 30 years, he holds a Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Montana State University-Bozeman, and completed a post-doctoral appointment in genetics with the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2016. With 20 years of teaching experience, Dr. Doyle is a full-time educational and cultural consultant, designing American Indian curriculum for many entities, including Montana public schools, the National Park Service, and the Museum of the Rockies. He is also currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Bozeman-based Extreme History Project, Hopa Mountain, and the Archaeological Conservancy, as well as serving on the Montana Arts Council culture and aesthetics committee, the advisor team with the Montana Wilderness School, and the Governor's Parks in Focus Committee. He and his wife, Megkian, are blessed with five children.
Chris Edelen
Board Member
Chris Edelen is a recognized leader of private equity and family owned businesses. He currently is a President of Sterling Home Technologies and in 2018 he and his wife Joan acquired Safe Showers, LLC a San Antonio and Austin, Texas remodeling company. Chris is a native of San Antonio, where he attended St. Mary’s University and earned a BBA with a concentration in Marketing. He is a member of Young Presidents Organization/World Presidents Organization and a member of the Board of the Greehey School of Business at St. Mary’s University. In his spare time Chris enjoys fly fishing, hiking and wildlife photography in the Greater Yellowstone region. He is married to Joan and they have two sons.
Sandra Lambert
Board Member
Sandra Lambert grew up not far from the banks of the Missouri River in Kansas City, where history and literature led her to the University of Missouri, advanced degrees and college teaching. Then, after a few seasons backpacking and skiing in Switzerland, she and her family moved west. In Missoula, Montana, a forest fire leveled their home and surrounding mountain canyon, impelling them on to the Wyoming's Tetons. In nearly 30 years in Jackson Hole, she taught skiing and kayaking, rode horses and climbed––all the JH stuff. She also followed Mountain Journal founder Todd Wilkinson’s columns in the News & Guide. She served on a number of boards and led the capital campaign to build a shelter for abused women and children. Her professional life has been as an author’s editor, which entails the reworking and shepherding of manuscripts to publication. A lover of rivers, she now makes her home in Livingston––to fish.
Roger Lang
Board Member
Roger Lang has been involved in analytical software since leaving Stanford with two degrees. Lang founded Infinity Financial Technology, which grew to become the world's leading supplier of derivatives trading, risk management and processing software. Lang led Infinity through its IPO, and was named one of the 50 most influential people in the history of financial risk management by Risk magazine. Lang also founded Cutthroat Communications, Inc., a rural broadband and telecommunications company headquartered in Montana, now sold. An active angel investor in innovative technology companies, Lang’s angel investment portfolio currently includes an Icelandic spirits company, ConnectAndSell, NetLevel, InSequent, SnapLogic, Predicta and others. Today, he is CEO and co-founder of Predicta, a growing company that specializes in brand analytics. Dedicated to conservation and science, Lang is a ranch owner and board member of the Catalina Island Conservancy. He divides his time between Greater Yellowstone and the coast.
Mike Sutton
Board Member
Mike Sutton has a diverse, varied and deep background in conservation that has led him to the upper levels of leadership positions. He currently is executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation based in San Francisco. Goldman's prestigious annual prize awarded to conservation advocates around the world is considered the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. After a childhood spent growing up in Yellowstone, Sutton went on to get a degree in wildlife biology from Utah State University and worked for the National Park Service as a ranger. Later getting his law degree from George Washington University, he served as investigator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Sutton has had executive management roles with World Wildlife Fund, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the National Audubon Society. A lifelong hunter and angler, he recently served as board president of the California Fish and Game Commission.Advisory Members
Paige Byron Curry
Advisory Member
Paige Byron Curry has over 10 years of experience in fundraising and non-profit management; during that time, she helped complete multiple $6M+ capital campaigns and launch two new organizations: Astoria Park Conservancy and Jackson Hole Children’s Museum. She is an avid outdoors-woman, and a Teton County, Wyoming native.
Kristine McDivitt Tompkins
Advisory Member
Kristine McDivitt Tompkins is the cofounder and president of Tompkins Conservation and the UN Patron of Protected Areas. The former CEO of Patagonia, Inc, she has spent almost 30 years protecting and restoring Chile and Argentina’s wild beauty and biodiversity through creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering economic vitality as a result of conservation. A key figure behind the establishment of 13 national parks in Argentina and Chile, she has helped to protect approximately 14.5 million acres through Tompkins Conservation and its partners. With her late husband Douglas Tompkins, who passed away in 2015, Kristine is considered one of the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history. In 2017, she received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. A global leader in conservation, she currently serves as Chair of National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places initiative.