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

John Cardoza

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.

Richael Young

With a background in economics, engineering, and entrepreneurship, Richael brings complementary skills for water resources management and policy. Richael’s career has been guided by her values of stewardship, excellence, and trust. She is passionate about driving impact in water sustainability and proud of her track record implementing trusted water policies and technologies across the U.S. West. 

Before joining Sustainable Conservation, Richael was CEO and cofounder of Mammoth Water, a company that developed software for water accounting and water trading. Richael has consulted on the design of demand management programs across the U.S. West, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, and Wyoming. Following Mammoth’s acquisition, Richael served as a senior economist at ERA Economics, where she supported water agencies, environmental nonprofits, and agribusinesses with designing and evaluating cost-effective water policies and projects. Richael has presented her work at the White House Water Summit, Stockholm World Water Week, Techstars Sustainability Accelerator in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, and the Imagine H2O and Milken Institute’s California Water Policy and Innovation Challenge. 

In her spare time, Richael advises other entrepreneurs and enjoys walks and playing board games with her husband and family. Richael holds a B.S. degree in civil and environmental engineering and M.S. degrees in environmental engineering and agricultural and consumer economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

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.