Sarah Pacyna
Regenerative Farms, Director of DevelopmentSarah has spent her professional career balancing the needs of wildlife, wild spaces, and people. Over the last 20 years, Sarah has gained significant experience in regenerative enterprise development with indigenous communities, conservation strategy, and practical boots-on-the-ground fundraising capabilities. Prior to joining RF, she led fundraising efforts for the Native Conservancy which was established in 2003 to empower Alaska Native peoples to permanently protect and preserve endangered habitats on their ancestral homelands. Native Conservancy is the very first Native-led, Native-owned land conservancy in the United States. Its kelp program serves Alaskan Native communities and native kelp farmers to be the rightful stakeholders of their ancestral waters for the value it can bring as a food source, to support habitat for forage fish such as pacific herring and salmon and as gainful employment. Kelp has long been a traditional food source and a mainstay of culinary practices, cultural identity, and traditional knowledge embedded in native ways and the genesis of regenerative thinking.
Sarah also supported fundraising and development for Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and the Audubon Mississippi Coastal Bird Stewardship Program, in a program she initiated on behalf of National Audubon Society, where she raised $3 M in dedicated conservation funds.
Earlier in her career, Sarah worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society managing multiple programs addressing threats to large and complex seascapes as well as long-distant ocean migrants over the globe.
Sarah studied at Fordham University and Columbia University. When Sarah is not working, she can be found wildlife watching with her young daughter or spending time with her motley crew of rescue and foster dogs and their ring leader, the sole cat, Tony Baloney.
