Alumni Profile:
Roger Hoesterey Directs Trust for Public Land’s West Division

Roger Hoesterey, '80

As Senior Vice President and Division Director West, Roger Hoesterey,’80, oversees The Trust for Public Land's conservation programs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah, Hawaii and Alaska. Founded in 1972, The Trust for Public Land is the only national nonprofit organization working exclusively to conserve land for people, from creating parks to protecting wilderness areas.

“All around the region people are showing how much the land we’re trying to save means to them," Hoesterey says. "They’re helping us develop visionary conservation plans, working with us to place an easement on their family farm, voting to pay additional taxes that will be dedicated to land conservation or just getting down to the shoreline to pick up some trash.”

Before joining the Trust for Public Land in 2000, Hoesterey worked for the City of Bellevue Parks and Community Services Department for 19 years, including serving as deputy director; he was responsible for property acquisitions, park design and construction and resource management for the city's 1,700-acre park system.

Maintaining a vital connection to Forest Resources, Hoesterey serves as a member of the Forest Resources Visiting Committee. He has also been an active participant in the School’s Northwest Environmental Forum, which strives to address regional environmental and natural resource challenges to help public decision makers better understand population dynamics, resource conflicts and their effects on the sustainability of natural systems.

In his keynote speech to the Forest Resources’ 2008 graduating class, Hoesterey talked about the value of his UW education. “When I look back at the years I spent at the UW, I know that the education I received has been critical to my career. Two important things I learned were communication skills and how to think about complex systems. An ability to think about, for example, the function of whole ecosystems and to communicate about it in a way that is understandable and that motivates people to take positive action has been vital to me in the management of people, politics and natural resources.” These skills will be important assets in a project for which Hoesterey recently traveled to the Island of Hawaii’s remote Ka’u Forest Preserve to work on the conservation of Hawaii’s rare native forests.