Your path: Environmental Expertise
Environmental Expertise Perfect Match for Goals
Lisa Jo Frech selected to lead Raindrops to Refuge
Excerpt from an article written by Ian Ruder for The Oregonian, October 26, 2006.
Lisa Jo Frech's office is cramped. Her computer is broken. Her business cards are someone else's old business cards and don't have her name on them.
She's spent the first five weeks as program manager for Raindrops to Refuge, the Sherwood-based environmental nonprofit, holed up in her tiny office instead of out in the field.
And she couldn't be happier.
"You've gotta do what you've gotta do," she says. "But I can't wait to get out in the field."
Frech's enthusiasm and dedication have served her well in a long environmental career. They're a big part of the reason she was selected to take over and energize five-year-old Raindrops to Refuge as it begins a new phase.
Frech, 49, discovered her passion for natural resource management while working toward her master's degree in park and recreation administration at Temple University in Philadelphia.
She became a recreation planner in Virginia and Delaware and as a contractor for the National Park Service. She also helped found and oversee the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance, a consortium working to protect the Nanticoke River watershed in southern Delaware and eastern Maryland.
After 12 years with the alliance, Frech moved west to Oregon in 2001 to be closer to family. Again contracting for the National Park Service, Frech traveled around the Northwest doing community and trail planning. She also began teaching part time at Marylhurst University and became certified as an environmental mediator.