Parks and Restoration

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 disc

How do we protect the places we love without forgetting the people who make that protection possible? Most people enter parks and conservation because they care deeply about the land. But as Rachel Franchina explains in this episode, the longer you stay in this profession, the more you realize that conservation is ultimately about people. Great leaders don't just manage resources—they build relationships, develop others, and create communities that care enough to protect those resources for gen

Why would an award-winning filmmaker move to Iowa planning to retire... only to end up making one of the state's most ambitious conservation documentaries? That's exactly what happened to Charlie Morris. After years producing conservation films around the world—from South Africa's disappearing great white sharks to threatened forests on the East Coast—Charlie arrived in Iowa intending to leave filmmaking behind. Then he started asking a simple question: "Why is everyone telling me not to swim

Are great leaders born...or are they built through experience, relationships, and deliberate practice? After spending ten years as a junior high English teacher, Teli Van Rycke made the kind of career change most people only talk about. Today, as Regional Director of Workforce Innovation at the Greater Burlington Partnership, she develops leaders, strengthens workplace culture, and helps shape the workforce of tomorrow. Together we unpack several assumptions about leadership—from the myth of t

What do a lightning storm, a white suit jacket, and a barbecue competition that ran out of food have in common? They all showed up at Burlington River Days 2026 — and they all left Chris with something worth talking about. This week's episode is a little different. Fresh off three days on the riverfront (and one very memorable Saturday night with a multi-platinum rock band, a delay, and skies that opened up right on cue), Chris shares three leadership lessons straight from the after-action revi

What if a robin-sized bird just flew 1,700 miles in 48 hours — and Iowa was a critical stop along the way? That's not a hypothetical. It happened. And we only know because of the Motus Wildlife Tracking Network. In this episode, Chris sits down with Anna Buckardt Thomas, avian ecologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Diversity Program, to dig into one of the coolest conservation science stories happening right now. Anna initiated the Motus network in Iowa, growing it fr