Events

Ashley Boren

Ashley has directed the strategy, growth and operations of Sustainable Conservation since 1997. Ashley received a 2007 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for her unwavering commitment to innovative, balanced problem-solving to address a variety of critical environmental problems facing California.

Prior to Sustainable Conservation, Ashley spent eight years at Smith & Hawken, a mail-order and retail gardening company, where she worked in finance, new business development, inventory planning and retail merchandising. She began her career at The Nature Conservancy in program development and fundraising.

Ashley serves on the Board of CalTrout and on the Presidents Advisory Commission for UC California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.  She served on California’s State Board of Food & Agriculture from 2006 to 2022 advising Governors Schwarzenegger, Brown and Newsom and Secretaries of Agriculture Kawamura and Ross on issues of food, agriculture and natural resources. She also served on the Board of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation from 2002 to 2011 (the last two years as Chair), on Stanford Business School’s Alumni Consulting Team Board from 1995 to 2002 (the last three years as Chair), and Executive Committee of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute’s External Advisory Board at UC Davis from 2008-2018.

Ashley has a BA in human biology, an MA in applied economics and an MBA from Stanford University.

John Cardoza

Working out of Sustainable Conservation’s Modesto office and partnering with Central Valley dairies, John leads the organization’s effort around nutrient management.  The effort focuses on different practices/technologies that improve nutrient/water use efficiency and water quality, while maintaining optimal crop yields.

John’s deep understanding of farming is attributed to growing up on a family farm near Modesto, CA and his experience working with diverse agricultural sectors. While with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, John served as a County Program Technician working closely with producers in all facets of agriculture, as well as with the Natural Resource Conservation Service and Resource Conservation and Development in San Luis Obispo County. At Farm Credit West, John gained an understanding of the financial side of farming on California’s Central Coast, working with vineyard operations, wineries and vegetable growers from Paso Robles to Santa Barbra.

Time spent on his family’s farm, Cardoza Farms, gave John firsthand experience farming alfalfa, silage corn, sweet corn, pumpkins and other crops. During this time, he also helped run a custom harvesting business and worked closely with dairies in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.

John earned his BS in Agribusiness from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Charles Delgado

Ryan Flaherty

Working out of our Modesto office, Ryan will lead the organization’s efforts to promote strategies for San Joaquin Valley dairies for managing animal waste in ways that benefit clean air and water. Ryan comes to us from Business for Social Responsibility, a non-profit that works with business to ensure a just and sustainable world, where he was a manager of advisory services working with the food, beverage and agricultural industries. Ryan has more than 15 years of experience in business strategy, supply chain management, sustainable agriculture, water stewardship and stakeholder engagement. He has an MBA from the University of South Carolina and a Bachelors of Arts from Tulane University.

Erika Lovejoy

Erika leads our Accelerating Restoration Initiative and is responsible for helping to acquire large regional and statewide programmatic permits and encourage other incentives to promote widespread implementation of restoration projects across California.

She has more than 20 years of experience working collaboratively with government agencies, the private sector and public interest groups on resolving environmental problems through both voluntary and policy solutions. Prior to joining Sustainable Conservation, Erika gained substantial policy and technical experience in habitat restoration and water quality protection while serving as an Environmental Scientist/Planner for California’s Water Boards, Coastal Commission, and Department of Water Resources, and for San Francisco County. Erika has also managed a major watershed planning effort for the South San Francisco Bay, leading environmental programs, mediating stakeholder conflicts, managing grants, and developing policy.

Erika acquired her BS in environmental policy analysis and planning from UC Davis.

Aysha Massell

Aysha has over 20 years of experience working in sustainable agriculture, water reuse systems, and river restoration. Prior to Sustainable Conservation, Aysha served as the Director of California Integrated Water Systems for American Rivers, where she collaborated with agencies, farmers, and partner NGOs on projects and policies that combine sustainable groundwater management, flood risk reduction, habitat enhancement, and surface and groundwater quality improvement. Before that, she was the storm water permit manager for UC Berkeley, where she translated state and federal regulations into campus-wide policies and actions, and helped to initiate and complete several creek restoration projects. Aysha received her MS in Environmental Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley, and her BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM. In her free time, Aysha likes to hike, bike and play music.

Daniel Mountjoy

Daniel is the Director of Resource Stewardship and leads the organization’s water program to promote new approaches to conserve and replenish groundwater supplies for agriculture, communities and the environment. He works to integrate technical knowledge, decision support tools, and policy in support of groundwater sustainability and habitat restoration through collaboration with farmers, the agricultural industry, researchers, agencies and other non-governmental organizations.  

Prior to joining Sustainable Conservation, Daniel was Assistant State Conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) serving the California Central Coast and San Francisco Bay-Delta regions. During his 17-year career with NRCS he fostered partnerships with Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs), technical advisors, researchers and the agricultural community to promote water quality and habitat protection practices, and led efforts to integrate food safety with conservation practices.  

Daniel earned a PhD in human ecology from UC Davis for his research on strategies to improve cross-cultural communication for resource management with Hispanic farmers. He also holds a BA in agroecology from UC Santa Cruz and an MA in Latin American studies from Stanford University. Daniel has practical on-the-ground experience as a farm and land manager on rural properties in northern California and as a landscape contractor in Santa Cruz County.