Sharon Collinge
Executive Director, Earth Leadership Program
Sharon brings diverse leadership experience and commitment to environmental sustainability to the role of Executive Director of the Earth Leadership Program. Sharon believes that good leadership doesn’t just happen, but that it takes intention, reflection, training, and practice. As a Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2004, Sharon gained pragmatic tools and joined a remarkable network of environmental scientists that accelerated her learning and practice of leadership. In the last 15 years, Sharon has engaged in collaborative leadership and in bringing “knowledge to action” in varied contexts, including the development and launch of a new professional masters’ program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, as Chief Scientist of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), and in building community-university partnerships within the newly-founded Center for Sustainable Landscapes and Communities at CU-Boulder. Sharon brings her skills, energy, and expertise to the role of Executive Director, and enjoys working with others in building the next phase of the Earth Leadership Program. Sharon joined the faculty of Environmental Studies at CU-Boulder in 1998, after earning a doctorate in landscape ecology from Harvard University in 1995. Sharon’s interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching focus on human-environment interactions in urban and wild landscapes. Her research emphasizes the impacts of habitat loss, fragmentation, and restoration on the persistence of native species, communities, and ecosystems, and is particularly relevant to the interface between environmental science and policy regarding endangered species and habitat protection. Sharon was elected to serve as the Ecological Society of America’s Vice President for Public Affairs from 2011-2014 and has been a member of the Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy of Colorado since 2016.