Ellen Kwiatkowski
Co-Director, Central Coast Region
Ellen has over 25 years of non-profit experience leading, developing, and implementing projects and initiatives for community benefit. An integrator at heart, her career has spanned multiple fields including land trust operations, biodiversity conservation, land acquisition, health care for the underserved and Native American tribal government operations and programs. In all of her roles, partnership development was an important part of advancing the work and she has experience implementing complex projects with multiple stakeholders including other nonprofits, and municipal, county, state and federal agencies.
Ellen worked for The Nature Conservancy for 10 years: in Latin America building capacity for protected area management with in-country partners and then as Director of Conservation Programs for the Delaware Chapter overseeing land protection, science and stewardship of preserves. She later served as Executive Director of the Bayfield Regional Conservancy, a land trust with a 4 county service area in Wisconsin’s Lake Superior Basin. Shortly after collaborating with the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians on a land repatriation project that established Frog Bay Tribal National Park, she went to work for the tribe as Planning Administrator. While there, she implemented Tribal Council strategic planning, community visioning, land repatriation planning and oversaw grants and administration. Ellen then went on to work for NorthLakes Community Clinic, a Federally Qualified Health Center with 14 clinics across rural northern Wisconsin, where she served as Grants Director, collaborating with clinic staff and other community partners to design and fund programs to support integrated health care services for the underserved with an emphasis on substance use recovery programs.
A lover of food with a keen interest in agriculture and community food systems Ellen, along with her husband Eric, also co-owned and operated Blue Vista Farm of Bayfield, a diversified organic fruit farm in Bayfield, WI, with direct and wholesale markets.
She currently resides with Eric and their cat, Pixie, in Ojai, where they are volunteer caretaker/managers of Meher Mount, a 172 acre semi-wilderness area on Sulphur Mountain.
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