Governance & Leadership

Brenden Sasich

Chair

Brenden Sasich serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute. He brings a combination of business development, sales leadership, relationship management, and information technology experience to the organization.

Throughout his recent professional career, Brenden has served in lead sales roles for three businesses, giving him substantial experience communicating value, developing customer and organizational relationships, identifying opportunities, and helping turn business objectives into measurable results. His earlier and continuing background in information technology adds a strong technical and analytical perspective to that experience.

That combination is particularly valuable to NBM as the organization develops relationships with businesses, public agencies, conservation organizations, educational institutions, equipment manufacturers, sponsors, and other potential partners. His experience in sales is not simply about selling a product; it involves understanding organizational needs, communicating effectively with decision-makers, building long-term professional relationships, and identifying arrangements that provide value to everyone involved.

As Board Chair, Brenden helps provide leadership and structure to the Board while supporting NBM's long-term organizational development. His business experience will be especially useful as NBM works to establish corporate partnerships, sponsorships, equipment relationships, institutional program sponsors, and sustainable sources of program revenue. His technology background also provides the Board with practical insight as NBM develops the communications, information, documentation, and operational systems needed to support professional field programs.

Brenden's role on the Board helps ensure that NBM's environmental mission is supported by sound business thinking, effective communication, strong external relationships, and practical organizational planning.

Lacey Holden

Vice Chair

Lacey Holden serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute. She brings strong business judgment, operational leadership, financial awareness, and firsthand experience managing a high-volume organization to the Board.

Professionally, Lacey is one of only six Partner General Managers within Cafe Rio’s organization of more than 130 restaurants. She manages one of the company’s highest-volume and most profitable locations, a responsibility that requires considerably more than day-to-day restaurant management. Her role demands disciplined financial management, staffing and leadership, operational consistency, customer service, problem-solving, performance accountability, and the ability to make sound decisions in a fast-moving business environment.

Those skills translate directly to NBM. As the Institute grows from a newly established nonprofit into an organization conducting complex field programs, the Board must continually balance its mission with practical considerations involving budgets, staffing, program costs, operational capacity, organizational growth, and financial sustainability. Lacey brings substantial real-world experience making those kinds of decisions.

Lacey is also the daughter of NBM founder and Executive Director Jeff Holden, but that relationship does not define her role on the Board. She was selected in part because she is independent-minded and willing to challenge assumptions, ask difficult questions, and disagree with the founder when she believes the organization would be better served by another course of action. Effective nonprofit governance requires directors who exercise their own judgment rather than simply affirming management decisions.

As Vice Chair, Lacey helps provide continuity in Board leadership while bringing an operator’s perspective to NBM’s plans. Her combination of business discipline, leadership experience, financial accountability, and independent judgment provides an important counterbalance as the Institute develops its programs, builds operational capacity, and works toward long-term financial sustainability.

Chris Kuhlman

Treasurer

Chris Kuhlman serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors for Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute. He brings a career built around precision, technical problem-solving, material knowledge, quality control, and accountability—skills particularly well suited to the responsibilities of the Treasurer.

Chris has spent many years working as a materials specialist and machinist, producing sophisticated, high-precision components for demanding customers that include government entities and Boeing. His work requires careful attention to specifications, measurements, materials, documentation, tolerances, and quality standards, where seemingly small details can have significant consequences.

That professional discipline translates directly to his role with NBM. As Treasurer, Chris helps the Board maintain appropriate oversight of the Institute's finances, budgets, expenditures, financial controls, asset acquisition, and organizational resources. His technical background and methodical approach provide the Board with someone accustomed to examining details carefully, identifying discrepancies, and expecting work to be accurate and verifiable.

His manufacturing experience also provides NBM with practical knowledge beyond traditional financial oversight. As the Institute develops a substantial inventory of field vehicles, trailers, communications systems, safety equipment, tools, and other specialized field assets, Chris's understanding of equipment, materials, fabrication, maintenance considerations, and technical specifications will be valuable when evaluating purchases, donations, equipment configurations, and long-term asset needs.

As Treasurer, Chris brings a precision-oriented and analytical perspective to the Board. His experience working in environments where accuracy, reliability, documentation, and accountability are fundamental makes him particularly well suited to helping NBM maintain responsible financial and operational practices as the organization grows.

Ruby Lee

Secretary

Ruby Lee serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors for Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute. She brings extensive experience in guest relations, hospitality management, relationship building, communication, and working with people from a wide range of backgrounds.

Throughout her career, Ruby has spent many years working as a VIP liaison for tribal casinos, where developing trusted relationships and providing a high level of personalized service were central to her responsibilities. Working successfully with VIP guests requires discretion, professionalism, strong interpersonal skills, careful attention to individual needs, and the ability to make people feel genuinely welcomed and valued.

Ruby has also managed a luxury spa within a prestigious casino resort, adding significant management and operational experience to her background. That role required coordinating employees and services, maintaining high standards, resolving problems, managing expectations, and ensuring that numerous details came together to provide a consistently professional guest experience.

Those skills translate particularly well to NBM. The Institute's programs will bring together agency representatives, tribal representatives, conservation professionals, educators, researchers, business leaders, sponsors, subject-matter experts, and community stakeholders—often people with very different backgrounds and perspectives. Creating an environment in which those participants feel welcomed, respected, heard, and comfortable engaging with one another is an important part of NBM's approach.

As Board Secretary, Ruby also contributes the organization, communication, attention to detail, and follow-through necessary for effective Board governance and institutional recordkeeping. Her professional background reinforces the importance of clear communication and ensuring that important details do not get lost.

Ruby brings a valuable people-centered perspective to a Board that also includes substantial business, technical, financial, and operational experience. Her ability to connect with people and understand the importance of the participant experience will be especially valuable as NBM develops its Field Table experience, stakeholder relationships, partner programs, and overall standard of hospitality in the field.

Chris Clatworthy. (C.R.)

Director

C.R. serves as a Director on the Board of Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute. He brings an important combination of sales experience, practical field experience, communication skills, and firsthand knowledge of working in a large, safety-conscious industrial environment.

C.R. has spent many years in sales, developing experience working directly with customers, understanding their needs, building relationships, communicating effectively, and finding practical solutions. That background gives NBM another Board member who understands the importance of developing lasting relationships with the businesses, agencies, organizations, sponsors, and community partners that will be essential to the Institute's growth.

C.R. also brings a distinctly different perspective through his work as a laborer with BNSF Railway. Working in the railroad environment requires an appreciation for safety procedures, teamwork, physical operations, equipment, changing field conditions, and the importance of people consistently following established processes. That practical experience is particularly relevant to an organization whose programs will routinely operate outside a conventional office environment.

For NBM, that combination is valuable. The Institute must be able to develop strong organizational relationships while also remaining grounded in the realities of field operations, transportation, equipment, safety, logistics, and the people actually performing the work. C.R. brings experience from both sides of that equation.

As a Director, C.R. provides the Board with a practical, operations-oriented perspective while contributing his experience in sales and relationship building. His background will be especially useful as NBM evaluates field procedures, equipment and transportation needs, organizational partnerships, and whether plans developed around a boardroom table will actually work when implemented in the field.

Jeff Holden

Founder & Executive Director · Non-voting

Jeff Holden is the Founder and Executive Director of Nature Beyond Maps Environmental Institute and serves with the Board in a non-voting capacity. He brings together two areas that have shaped much of his life: a long professional career in software development and systems thinking, and decades spent exploring and experiencing the outdoors.

Professionally, Jeff has spent most of his career as a software developer, working in a field built around analyzing complex problems, understanding how individual components interact within larger systems, identifying weaknesses, and developing practical solutions. That systems-oriented approach strongly influences the concept behind Nature Beyond Maps: complicated environmental and land-management questions are rarely understood by looking at a single issue in isolation.

Outside of his professional career, Jeff has been a lifelong outdoor enthusiast. His experience includes watercraft, snowmobiles, ATVs and side-by-sides, camping, remote travel, and extensive time exploring forests, trails, waterways, and backcountry areas. Those experiences have given him the opportunity to observe landscapes over time rather than simply encounter them once.

Through those years outdoors, Jeff has seen firsthand the differences that thoughtful—and sometimes inadequate—management can make to forests, trail systems, waterways, public access, and the surrounding landscape. He has also come to recognize that these issues are rarely as simple as they appear on a map, in a photograph, or within a written report. Decisions involving natural resources frequently require balancing conservation, responsible access, public use, safety, economic realities, stewardship, and long-term land management.

That experience became a central motivation for creating Nature Beyond Maps.

Jeff believes that better stewardship begins with seeing, listening, learning, and understanding conditions firsthand. NBM was created to provide the field-access capability that allows decision-makers, professionals, educators, organizations, and community stakeholders to get beyond maps and reports, stand in the landscape together, hear different perspectives, and develop a more complete understanding of the decisions before them.

As Executive Director, Jeff is responsible for translating that concept into functioning programs, partnerships, field capabilities, and organizational infrastructure. As Founder, however, he intentionally serves as a non-voting participant with the Board. NBM is intended to be governed by an independent Board whose directors can question proposals, challenge assumptions, exercise their own judgment, and hold the organization and its Executive Director accountable.

His objective is not simply to build an organization that provides access to remote places. It is to help NBM become an organization that encourages people to understand those places more completely, work together more effectively, and ultimately become better stewards of the natural environments entrusted to all of us.