Emilene Ostlind, board chair, is the founding editor of Western Confluence magazine of the Ruckelshaus Institute in Laramie, covering science-based and collaborative approaches to natural resource problem solving in the West. Originally from Big Horn, she has served as photographic coordinator at National Geographic magazine in Washington, D.C., a reporter at High Country News in Colorado, and a freelance reporter covering environmental and community stories in the West. Her interest in science storytelling and environmental and natural resource challenges in the western U.S. will no doubt strengthen WyoFile’s work.
Eugenie Copp, vice chair, has served on WyoFile’s board since November of 2019.
Anna Sale, treasurer, is the host and managing editor of the award-winning interview podcast Death, Sex & Money from WNYC Studios. Before starting the podcast, she was the launching editor of WNYC’s national politics website itsafreecountry.org and covered statehouse politics for public broadcasting in Connecticut and West Virginia. She is the author of the book Let’s Talk About Hard Things, which The New Yorker wrote “shows us how supportive listening happens.” She was raised in Charleston, West Virginia, and graduated with a history degree from Stanford. She lives in Berkeley during the academic year with her husband, wildlife ecologist Arthur Middleton, and their two daughters. They spend summers next door to Arthur’s dad and stepmother up the South Fork outside Cody.
Pete Williams, secretary, a native of Casper and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. He successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
For 29 years, he covered the US Supreme Court and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security as a Washington, DC-based correspondent for NBC News, receiving four national news Emmy awards and as two Edward R. Murrow Awards.
Prior to joining NBC, he was an aide to two members of Wyoming’s congressional delegation — Cliff Hansen and Dick Cheney. In 1989, when Cheney became Secretary of Defense, Williams was confirmed by the US Senate as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.
He is an avid backpacker and has climbed and hiked in the Tetons and the Wind River mountains. He divides his time between Washington and Jackson with his spouse, David Gardner, a psychiatrist.
Casey Sheahan, director, is a lifelong writer, editor, fly fisherman, outdoorsman, and outdoor industry executive currently living in Teton Village, Wyoming. He retired in 2022 after serving as the CEO of SIMMS Fishing Products since 2017. From 2014-2017 he was on the board of directors and was President of KEEN Footwear in Portland, Oregon. From 2005-2014 Casey was CEO of Patagonia, Inc./Lost Arrow Corporation. He has enjoyed a long career in the outdoor industry working as president of Kelty Packs, VP marketing of Wolverine World Wide/Merrell Footwear, and category marketing director of NIKE’s ACG Outdoor Division.
Casey currently serves on the board of Johnson Outdoors and was senior advisor at the public relations/digital marketing agency, Backbone Media, from 2014-2016. He also co-founded the Conscious Global Leadership Institute, was president of the Outdoor Industry Conservation Alliance, and served on the executive committee and board of the Outdoor Industry Association from 1999-2005. He started his career as a writer/editor working for Runner’s World, Nordic World and SKI Magazines, and then was editor and later publisher of POWDER Magazine from 1985-1989. He graduated from Stanford University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies.
Peter Salas, director, lives in Lafayette, Colorado. Peter is the father of 3, a son who lives in Cheyenne, a son who is a sophomore at the University of Colorado and a teenage daughter who lives with him and attends high school.
Peter has a B.S. degree in Business Finance and began his public career as a community organizer and has been actively involved in community affairs his entire career. Peter has served on over a dozen local community non-profit boards as well as a few state-wide advisory councils in Colorado and Wyoming. In addition, Peter has served on the Cheyenne City Council and the Boulder Valley School Board.
Peter was a founding member of the Boulder County Latino Chamber and has served on the Board of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and the former Minority Business Leadership Council. Peter has also been actively involved in local politics and has helped organize 3 different Latino-focused political organizations.
During Peter’s professional work career, he has been a community organizer, project
coordinator, diversity coordinator, diversity liaison, intercultural trainer, program manager and public affairs specialist. Peter currently offers consulting services in Intercultural Development and Training.
Peter is a champion for advancing equity, and urban development strategies to expand economic opportunity.
Patti Baldes, director, is an enrolled Northern Arapaho with Northern Paiute descent, born on the Big Pine Paiute Reservation in California and raised on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Baldes is the Executive Director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, a civic & social non-profit organization based in Fort Washakie, Wyoming. The Wind River Native Advocacy Center serves the Wind River Reservation, its tribal members and its neighboring communities. The organization promotes self-determination in traditional knowledge, education, health, art, economic development and equality while empowering Native Americans to have a stronger voice, stronger community and equal representation, as well as building relationship with local communities and Tribal, State and Federal governments.
Patti enjoys sharing her story and conservation experiences through her photography line dubbed Patti with an Eye. She has been sharing photos for close to 20 years, sharing images of her homelands and all that catches her eye. Her focus has and will continue to be the Buffalo, assisting in restoring them to and increasing their presence on tribal lands, and sharing her talents through art, photography and storytelling.
Susan Stubson, director, is a sixth generation Wyomingite. She is a concert pianist, a writer and an attorney.
A collaborative pianist and active recitalist who concertizes throughout the Rocky Mountain region, she worked in New York City as a freelance pianist for the Orchestra of Saint Lukes as well as a freelance audition pianist for various classical music labels, eventually working as a vocal coach and a rehearsal pianist at the Juilliard School of Music and at the Metropolitan Opera.
Equal parts pianist and writer, Susan’s pieces have been published in the Casper Star Tribune, WyoFile, Cowboy State Daily and in the New York Times. She is an attorney at Crowley Fleck PLLP with a focus on pro bono work.
Susan’s essays on politics, faith and community have led to appearances on NBC’s Meet The Press Now with Chuck Todd, CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight, the BBC and ITV News in the United Kingdom, The Michael Medved Show, France’s newspaper Le Figaro, and the Swiss-German publication Neue Zurcher Zeitung. She has been the focus of several documentaries currently in production on Democracy in America.
Susan has been a professional skier, a spokesmodel, a commercial actress, a voice-over artist, and a short order cook. She and her husband Tim have two boys, Huck and Finn, and a cow dog, Ruby Clark. She’s ridden thousands of miles on her bike, stood atop Devil’s Tower, climbed almost all of Colorado’s Fourteeners and recently passed herself off as a backcountry doctor.
Loring Woodman, director emeritus, escaped his native New Jersey two weeks after graduating from college in 1964 and moved to northwest Wyoming. Even now he can’t quite figure out how he managed to talk his East Coast family into backing his harebrained scheme to turn an abandoned log homestead in the Gros Ventre Range into a viable wilderness guest ranch, but that became his life (listen to “Beloved ranch for sale” for a good story about the Darwin Ranch). Long winters made it possible for Woodman to investigate a variety of out-of-state, part-time work projects, including a short stint as a programming consultant in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s while still operating his Wyoming business from a distance. His 50 year ownership of the ranch inholding has provided a rich education in the workings of the Forest Service. Woodman was deeply involved with Wyoming’s congressional delegation leading up to the passage of the Wyoming Wilderness Act of 1984.