When Anjolene read the job description for a Collaborative Forestry Manager position with Hampton Lumber, she couldn’t believe it. ”They were describing me,” she said. “It was my dream job—right there in print.” A key component was the ability to bring together people with diverse—sometimes opposing—perspectives.
She had done that with Conservation Corps teams on two continents. She’d worked with forestry crews for the Bureau of Land Management Spokane District, facilitated diverse stakeholder groups and interdisciplinary teams of resources specialists to implement projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and negotiated high-sensitivity resource management planning meetings with the Monument Advisory Committee on the San Juan Islands National Monument.
“I’m just naturally good at it. I can get along with anybody,” she said. “People are willing to talk if you foster a bond through your common humanity.”
Her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and a master’s in Natural Resources impressed them, too, as well as her personable, can-do attitude.
Hired by Hampton in 2018, she is active on the board of Pinchot Partners and works with seven of Washington’s nine National Forest collaboratives. That translates to a lot of conversations, meetings, and subcommittee work. She travels extensively across the state, often patching in to online meetings pulled off on a dirt road.
After finding her dream job as the “lumber hippie,” Anjolene met her dream partner, Antony Ngari, and the two were married in 2021. In her down time, she loves chasing sunshine, water and her 11 nieces and nephews. She recently moved to Kent, strategically centered and close to the onramps that will take her to the next collaboration.