The staff and Board of Directors of Village Earth would like to welcome four new members to our Board. Below you can read a little more about the newest members of the Village Earth Family. Click here to see a complete listing of Village Earth’s Board of Directors.
Ronald Hall, J.D.
Ronald Hall is the Director of the Tribal Technical Assistance Program (TTAP) at Colorado State University. He has served in that capacity since 1995. While at the TTAP Ron helped coordinate the National Tribal Road Conference since 1998. He has served on the Executive Board of the National Local Technical Assistance Program Association since 1997 and was the Executive Board’s Chairman for 2002. Mr. Hall also played a key role in creating the Committee on Native American Transportation Issues in the Transportation Research Board, and has been the Chairman of that Committee from 2001‐2007. In addition to administering the TTAP, he provides consulting services as a facilitator/mediator and legal services. Prior to his tenure at the TTAP, Ron practiced law in private practice for 11 years primarily as general counsel for tribal governments, corporations, and Native American owned businesses.
Lee Scharf, M.A., J.D.
Lee Scharf has worked as a mediator in community mediation, peer mediation in public school systems, court-ordered mediation within tribal, federal and community mediation contexts, has conducted large national facilitations and worked in environmental conflict resolution in all media. She has a Masters’ degree in Environmental Conflict Resolution and over twenty years’ experience as a mediator working with tribal nations. Ms. Scharf’s environmental conflict resolution taxonomy and annotated bibliography was published by the American Bar Association in 2002. She worked for the Environmental Protection Agency from 1991 until 2006, first in the Superfund Enforcement program and then in the Office of General Counsel in Washington, DC. From 2000 until 2006 Ms. Scharf was the National Tribal Mediation Lead for EPA through EPA’s Conflict and Prevention and Resolution Center. She is a Coordination Committee member of the Native Dispute Resolution program for the United States Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Ms Scharf is currently an Associate Fellow at Colorado State University’s Center for Collaborative Conservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is a member of the Executive Advisory Committee for this Center. Ms Scharf lived on the Navajo Nation from 1956-1959 and this experience shaped her professional life and her view of the world. She has mediated with many tribal nations in the United States, and is currently working with the Northern Arapaho on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming and with traditional Navajo people living on Hopi Partitioned Lands in Arizona. Ms. Scharf is also leading a national project through Colorado State University to explore the use of dispute resolution practices within tribal governments as part of tribal self- determination efforts, knowing that each tribal world view is unique and valuable and that power and colonialism is always an issue when dispute resolution processes are used or proposed. Ms Scharf is the mother of three children and the grandmother of two. Lee teaches a course in Community-Driven Dispute Resolution.
George Stetson, Ph.D.
George received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Colorado State University, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of the Andes (Mérida, Venezuela), and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arizona. George has worked as the Director of Educational Community Center at Fe y Alegría in Loma de los Maitines squatter village, Mérida, Venezuela, at the National Housing Council, and as a researcher at the University of the Andes (Regional Integration Group) on subjects such as poverty, social policy, and democracy. His areas of expertise include sustainable development, Latin American politics, participatory development methodologies in Venezuelan squatter villages, and grassroots ecosystem management. He has also worked extensively in the Peruvian Amazon looking at the politics of oil development. He also has taught short courses for a Ph.D. program for Trisakti University in Indonesia.
Jamie Way, M.A
Jamie received her M.A. in Political Science from Colorado State University. Her academic work focused on Latin America, international development, political theory and indigenous rights. She served as Village Earth’s training director from 2008-2012. She has also been involved with Village Earth’s work on the Pine Ridge Reservation and in the Peruvian Amazon. Her specialties include advocacy campaigns, strategic planning, issue framing and training for social justice. She currently serves as the New Media Specialist for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. She has also worked for Alliance for Global Justice, a Latin America solidarity organization.
