Position: Communications and Outreach Coordinator – SFBJV (2002-2022)
June 2022
Caroline Warner had a magical inception with the SFBJV partnership thanks to serendipity and a story worth telling.
Fresh out of college from Georgetown University, she worked for Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary (RBAC), from 1985-86 and bi-annually in April until 1994: first as an unpaid intern and then as a naturalist and teacher for their annual retreats at Asilomar. She spent several years scraping by in these fields from California to Vermont to Colorado, while earning a degree in massage therapy on the side. Eventually she switched careers from a focus on caring for the outer environment to focusing more on helping people find an inner well being. Looking back, she believes it was her near death car accident at the age of 16 that called her to follow a path of service with a commitment to bring more kindness, care, compassion and joy to life.
Fast forward to 2001, and one day while she was offering chair massage on the ferry to San Francisco, Beth Huning, her former boss at RBAC, was on the boat heading to her first day as the Coordinator of the SFBJV. Beth promptly sat in the chair to receive some healing touch and suddenly turned toward Caroline to ask if she was by chance looking for outreach work to protect habitat for birds and other wildlife? In fact she was. Caroline had been hearing a little voice inside beckoning her back to step up for the environment.
And so it was that a few weeks later, Caroline was introduced as the new Outreach Coordinator for the SFBJV to many of the Bay Area’s most committed and influential conservation leaders, at what was then the headquarters of BCDC on one Market Street in SF. This was in a way, a dream come true for her!
Some of her professional highlights over her two+ decades of involvement include:
- Being the visionary and creator of 6 “wetland restoration is working” video shorts, produced with TrimTab Media attempting to show in one minute (or less) how the efforts of the SFBJV partnership have and are making a difference around the Bay Area;
- Producing a weekly podcast program called “Your Wetlands” with Jerry Kay from Media Interchange over the course of several years;
- Preventing the Cosco Busan Oil spill from entering the South Bay Salt Ponds by helping to close the tide gates before the oil arrived.
- Scripting and producing an audio tour of wetland projects along Highway 37 while also convincing the mayors of the two “bookend” cities, Novato and Vallejo, to adopt the name the “Flyway Highway” for the passageway through 17 miles of restored wetlands;
- Producing the SFJBV popular tri-weekly e-newsletter – the Bulletin for over a decade;
- Leading the overhaul of the SFBJV website, for launch sometime in 2022;
- Hosting a live webcast for 200,000 registered students following shorebird migration along the Pacific Flyway;
On July 7, 2022, Caroline will pass the SFBJV Communications torch on to the next person (yet to be determined) to carry forward the great honor of advocating for and telling the story of the SFBJV partnership, the work they do and the beautiful habitats and birds they seek to conserve and protect. While the future is indeed unknown, she hopes to bring her skills, passion and infectious personality to wherever it is needed most. For those in need, she does expect to continue communications work and consulting, with a particular interest in writing and sharing stories about the good work happening to protect our natural environment.
Caroline finds connection to beauty and inspired living in her garden, cooking, on her bike, walking the trails of West Marin, and with her friends and beloved partner, Otto. She also derives meaning from her work as a volunteer with the Threshold Choir where she has sung both at the bedside of people in transition and with women in the Marin County Jail for 18 years. She finds creative expression through poetry, song writing and other projects like her podcast about women who, by choice or chance, have not had children and what they are doing with their love instead.