Parks and Restoration

How do you grow an organization without losing the culture, relationships, and local ownership that made it successful in the first place? Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever have undergone extraordinary growth. What was once an organization of roughly 150 employees has grown to more than 600, including more than 400 private-lands biologists working across the country. That kind of growth requires new systems, new layers of leadership, and more organizational structure. But it also creates a ch

What if the outcome went badly—but you still made the right decision? Leadership rarely gives us complete information or guaranteed results. We make the best call we can, something unexpected happens, and hindsight makes it tempting to judge the decision entirely by how things turned out. In this episode, Chris talks with keynote speaker, author, former actuary, and champion poker player Steve Fredlund about making better decisions in an uncertain world. Steve shares lessons from his “Safari

What if protecting the parks and natural areas we still have simply isn't enough? Dr. Doug Tallamy has spent decades studying the relationships between plants, insects, birds, and the ecosystems that sustain them. His conclusion is both sobering and empowering: our remaining parks and preserves are too small and too isolated to carry the entire burden of conserving biodiversity. We have to put nature back everywhere else, too. Doug is an entomologist, professor at the University of Delawar

What can 100 conversations teach us about leadership, conservation, and the people who make meaningful work possible? For the 100th episode of Parks and Restoration, Chris Lee is joined by past co-host Jeremy Yost, with Teli Van Rycke turning the tables and facilitating the conversation. They look back at how the podcast started as a simple effort to capture the institutional knowledge of retiring conservation leaders, how it nearly ended, and how it eventually evolved into something much

What if one of the best ways to prevent burnout is not reducing the work—but changing how people experience it together? Nonprofit leaders and volunteers often enter the work because they want to make a difference. But when every solved problem is replaced by another, even deeply committed people can lose sight of the progress they are making. Jordan DeGree, executive director of the Iowa Nonprofit Alliance, joins Chris for a wide-ranging conversation about nonprofit leadership, volunteer eng

What changes when you treat leadership as a privilege instead of a position? Matt Doty has spent decades studying leadership in places where trust, accountability, and performance matter. After a 20-year career in the Iowa National Guard—including service as a first sergeant and command sergeant major—he carried those lessons into senior operational roles in the corporate world. In this episode, Matt joins Chris and Teli to explore what values-driven leadership looks like in practice. They di