A new face with a long history at the League to Save Lake Tahoe has taken over as executive director of the lake’s oldest environmental organization.
Darcie Goodman-Collins, a 32-year-old League board member and native of South Lake Tahoe, will lead the nonprofit famous for its ‘Keep Tahoe Blue’ slogan beginning in early February. She takes over for long-time executive director Rochelle Nason, who resigned last fall.
Although Goodman-Collins has a deep history with the League, under her leadership the organization appears to be shifting fairly dramatically. The League has closed their Berkeley offices, where a sizable portion of the nonprofit’s staff used to reside and work, including Nason. And the League’s focus on often-controversial legal strategies to stop development, redevelopment, and Tahoe Basin plans appears to be softening. Over the past several years the League, the City of South Lake Tahoe, and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency often engaged in very public and heated conflicts. Nason, who started at the League as a lawyer, often publicly led the charge to sue Tahoe projects and plans.
Goodman-Collins brings a much different background to the League. In 1996 she was one of the non-profit’s earliest volunteers. She earned a doctorate in environmental science from U.C. Santa Barbara, and went on to mobilize thousands of volunteers as habitat restoration director for Save the Bay.
Goodman-Collins said that she will focus on making the organization ‘proactive rather than reactive.’ That approach will cover both the League’s approach to development projects and community planning as well as the organization’s focus on community involvement.
‘What I really want to do, which is not necessarily a change in the League’s goals, is … to really involved the community in what we are doing,’ said Goodman-Collins. ‘We don’t just have to be the watchdog for the lake — the community and the non-local community that visits the lake can help in that goal.’
By engaging the Tahoe community in environmental work, Goodman-Collins hopes to both increase the League’s capacity to complete environmental projects and also boost the community’s involvement as advocates for the lake.
Goodman-Collins’ long history at Lake Tahoe, scientific background, and involvement at the League allow her to hit the ground running in February. And one of the first changes you can expect is a much more collaborative organization under her leadership,
‘There are two lessons that I’ll bring with me into this position. The first I learned at Save The Bay. It is that collaboration, both outside and inside the organization, is critical for success. The second I learned as a board member at the League. It is that sound science must play a crucial role in decision-making if we are to make wise choices on how we engage with and preserve our outdoor treasures for all of us,’ said Goodman-Collins in a prepared statement.
