Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources

Chris Siegler, Chairman (Missoula, Montana)

Chris was in management positions in healthcare and telecommunications before becoming a Financial Advisor with Merrill Lynch 13 years ago. He has been active in the Missoula community, serving on the Board and as Board President of the YMCA, The United Way, Missoula Youth Homes, Partnership For Children, Missoula Food Bank and the Valleys Preservation Council. Chris and his wife Jeannie met while Peace Corps volunteers in Sierra Leone, West Africa. They have two sons — one a former IJNR Fellow of Energy Country — and two grandchildren. He graduated from Notre Dame and has a master's degree in public administration from the University of Montana.

Michael Daly, Vice Chairman (Dallas, Texas)

Mike brings to IJNR an extensive knowledge of natural sciences and science-based education curricula. After receiving a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas, he completed a post-doctoral program in neurophysiology. He has taught undergraduate and graduate students. He arranged for the participation of parochial-school students in Stanford University's Human Biology Middle School Project. He has served as a judge for the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair for 35 years, including 15 years as one of three judging coordinators. As a researcher, he has received medical patents and has co-authored peer-reviewed articles on epilepsy, hearing disorders and speech perception. Along the way, Mike designed and built light weight seating for private jets and jump seats for medical-evacuation helicopters. He once answered a newspaper ad that led to his installing the plumbing in a tour bus for singer Hank Williams Jr.

Frank Edward Allen, President and Trustee (Missoula, Montana)

Frank spent 14 years at The Wall Street Journal as a writer and columnist, a features editor, a bureau chief and the paper's first environment editor. Earlier he also reported and shaped news coverage about the economy and the environment for the Eugene Register-Guard, The Associated Press, the Tucson Daily Citizen, The Minneapolis Star and Reuters News Service. In 1994, he left The Wall Street Journal to become a full-time professor and dean of the University of Montana's School of Journalism, where he created expedition-style learning programs for journalists that evolved into IJNR. He is principal author of "Matching the Scenery: Journalism's Duty to the North American West". Frank serves on the advisory board of the Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellowships program at the University of Colorado and as board chair for Seattle-based InvestigateWest.

Mary G. Hager, Treasurer (Falls Church, Virginia)

Mary is a versatile freelance writer who retired a few years ago from Newsweek magazine after a long, productive career as a Washington-based correspondent and contributing editor. Since 1978, she has reported extensively on issues of science, medicine and the environment. Her more recent work includes commission reports to the President and Congress on arthritis and epilepsy. Her writing received considerable recognition over the years, including the Balance in Journalism Award of the National Environmental Development Association, the Page One Award of the New York Newspaper Guild, and the Searle Award of the American Medical Writers Association.

In 1997, she was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the U.S./Japan Common Agenda Conference on Environmental Education. In 2000, she traveled to Southeast Asia as a Senator John Heinz Fellow in Environmental Reporting. She serves on the board of directors of the National Research Center for Women & Families.

Steve Dolberg, Secretary (Missoula, Montana)

Steve has been the sole owner and chief executive officer of Majestic Homes, Inc., a manufactured and modular housing dealer located in Billings, Montana, for the past 16 years. Prior to that he was a corporate lawyer in New York, the District of Columbia and Los Angeles, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. He has been active in Missoula with the cycling and triathlon communities, as a volunteer with the local reproductive rights clinic, and as a participant in and volunteer for long-distance charity bike rides.

Steve is an avid traveler, scuba diver and nature photographer. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his law degree from Stanford.

Rick Rodriguez, Trustee (Phoenix, Arizona)

Rick is a Professor of Journalism, Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor, and Professor of Practice at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. He is is the Cronkite School's first Carnegie Professor specializing in Latino and transnational news coverage. The former executive editor of The Sacramento Bee in Sacramento, Calif., and the first Latino president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors came to the Cronkite School in 2008 to develop a new cross-disciplinary specialization in the coverage of issues related to Latinos and the U.S.-Mexico border. While he was at the Bee, the paper won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. Rodriguez is known nationally as a champion of watchdog journalism and newsroom diversity.

Diane Hawkins-Cox, Trustee (Atlanta, Georgia)

Diane served until recently as a senior producer for the science and technology unit at CNN in Atlanta. She joined CNN just months before the cable network was launched in 1980. She has been a co-producer of Next@CNN, a weekly hour-long newsmagazine focusing on technology, science, environment, and space, and the producer of Earth Matters, a weekly half-hour news magazine on global environmental issues. Along with colleagues in the CNN Environment Unit, Diane won a national Emmy for "In Nature's Wake," a CNN special program about the 1993 Mississippi River floods, and the Cable ACE Award for coverage of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

Before joining CNN, Diane was a writer and producer with KCMO-TV (now KCTV-TV) in Kansas City. In 2006, she served as a juror for the first Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. In addition to being a member of IJNR's Board of Trustees, she serves on IJNR's Council of Advisors.

Marc Johnson, Trustee (Boise, Idaho)

Marc is a partner in the Boise office of Gallatin Public Affairs. For more than 30 years he has helped shape public policy and has counseled clients on public policy and problem solving in Idaho and the Northwest.

He has developed public affairs and communications strategies and helped solve problems for clients in higher education and the timber, mining, healthcare and energy industries, among others. He is a frequent author of newspaper and magazine pieces on political and public policy and is regularly called upon to comment on public policy, the media and political history.

Marc served as both press secretary and chief of staff to Idaho's only four-term governor, Cecil Andrus. He helped Idaho's largest hospital system secure public support for a merger, advised the state court system on public outreach, and helped preserve a pristine spot where Lewis and Clark camped in the Idaho.

He is a member of the Crisis Communication and Litigation Support practice group.

Bebe Crouse, Trustee (Bozeman, Montana)

Bebe is an accomplished reporter, editor and documentary maker. In late 2006, she traded the humidity and politics of Washington, DC for a slower paced life in Bozeman, Montana. Prior to that move, Bebe spent nearly 10 years as the Western and Environment Editor at National Public Radio. She worked as a reporter in Oregon and California, as well as Mexico and Central America—where she covered the civil wars in Nicaragua and Guatemala, timber wars in Oregon and water wars throughout the West. Bebe also spent five years at CBS News in New York, where she wrote radio commentary for Dan Rather and Charles Kuralt, and produced television segments for the network. She was part of a team that produced the first live U.S. television broadcasts from Cuba, during the Castro-Gorbachev summit. Her work has been recognized with Dupont, Casey, Robert F. Kennedy, Headliner and Society of Professional Journalism Awards as well as an Emmy nomination.

She is now working as a consultant for non-profit science and conservation organizations to help them improve their communications. She believes that too often, the scientists, economists and other specialists, who have the sort of unbiased data that is essential to good conservation and land use decisions, lack the skills to cut through the overwhelming din of conflict surrounding these issues. Her goal is to help them lose the jargon and become effective and compelling story-tellers—a goal not unlike that of a good journalist!