Brittany Covich serves as the policy and outreach division chief at the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), a state conservancy under the California Natural Resources Agency that works to improve the environmental, economic, and social well-being of the Sierra–Cascade region. She began working for the SNC in 2007 after completing a bachelor’s degree in geography at Chico State. She worked directly with community partners on wildfire risk reduction and forest resilience projects as a grant manager and field representative, and she now leads the SNC’s policy, communications, science, and community support work. Covich grew up in the Sierra–Cascade region, where she continues to live and play with her husband and young son.

Bradley Franklin is a research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. He is an agricultural and environmental economist who focuses on ways to inform the design and implementation of public policy in natural resource management. His research covers a range of topics, including the use of market instruments to secure water for environmental use, sustainable groundwater management, irrigated agricultural production, water recycling and urban water markets, urban heat islands, and climate change adaptation in fisheries. He has worked on water resource issues in a number of places, including California, Australia, and India. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Riverside.

Kyle Greenspan is a research associate with the PPIC Water Policy Center, where he focuses on topics ranging from groundwater to carbon sequestration. Previously he worked as a PPIC summer intern for the water center. Prior to joining PPIC, he interned with the United States Forest Service Pacific Northwest and Southwest regional offices and conducted disease ecology research as an undergraduate student researcher. He holds a BA in environment, economics, and politics from Pitzer College.

Letitia Grenier is director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, where she is also a senior fellow and holds the Ellen Hanak Chair in Water Policy. She previously directed the Resilient Landscapes Program of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where she served as a resource for local and national media; advised government and agency staff; and worked with partners to conserve California’s living resources by developing landscape-scale, collaborative, science-based visions and solutions. She was also the 2020 PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow and an adjunct fellow with the PPIC Water Policy Center. Throughout her career, she has worked as a proponent and leader of science-based management. In 2019 and 2015, she served as the science lead for the State of the Estuary Report, and she was also the science lead for the 2015 update to the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals, heading a team of over 200 environmental scientists, managers, and regulators to develop recommendations for restoring and maintaining the health of the Bay’s tidal wetlands in the face of rising sea levels and other stressors. She completed her PhD at University of California, Berkeley, where her research concentrated on the ecology of the Bay-Delta estuary system.

Margo comes from the traditional Yurok village of Morek and is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe.  She is the co-founder and executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council, co-lead of the Indigenous People’s Burn Network, and member of the International Indigenous-led Fire Network. She graduated from Humboldt State University and resides on the Yurok reservation in far northern California. She previously served as the Indian education director for the Klamath–Trinity Joint Unified School district. She is a mom and a grandma.

Scott Stephens is the Henry Vaux special professor of forest policy at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center Research Network. He is interested in the interactions between ecosystems and prehistoric, current, and future wildland fire. He is also interested in how to improve wildland fire and forest policy to meet the challenges of the coming decades, including working with Indigenous partners to learn how to steward ecosystems into the future with climate change. Stephens has given testimony on fire and forest policy at the US House of Representatives, the White House, the California assembly and senate, and the California governor’s office. He served on the 2024 US Wildfire Commission, and he is on the board of directors of the Climate Wildfire Institute. He is one of the leaders of The Stewardship Project, which is a partnership of Indigenous people and western science to improve federal fire policy. He ranked in the top 1% of most-cited researchers worldwide in 2024 and 2025.