Humans Of
SAVE THE BAY
Your support drives critical restoration, advocacy, and education to protect and restore San Francisco Bay. Read on to meet the inspiring people behind the work.
In times of uncertainty,
our community inspires us.
We find strength and resilience in you, the people that support our mission and work with us each day to protect our beautiful Bay. When you give to Save The Bay, you invest in your community, and a resilient future for San Francisco Bay.
Your gift directly supports our work to:
Advocate for smart climate policies that protect our region
Restore acres of wetlands that buffer communities and provide habitat
Educate the next generation of environmental advocates
Meet the humans of Save The Bay.
The stories shared here are just a few of the inspiring humans of Save The Bay–the remarkable community of donors, volunteers, and advocates that you are part of. Through these snapshots, we hope you’ll find the same sense of hope and inspiration that fuels our work. When you give to Save The Bay, you not only support our work—you are a part of the story.
David Lewis
Executive Director
One of my first projects was opposing a plan to expand the runways at SFO by filling in two square miles of the Bay. It wasn’t clear we’d win, but I knew that Save The Bay had to fight. That decision not only protected the Bay but helped the organization grow and proved that modern advocacy could lead to real victories.
As we look ahead, we know the Bay faces immense challenges. The incoming Trump administration has already made clear its intentions to slash environmental protections and strip away federal funding. We saw these same threats under the previous Trump administration. But we fought back—successfully—and we will do so again.
I’m confident in our ability to make progress here, in spite of federal rollbacks. California's environmental laws are among the strongest in the nation, and we’ve seen how effective Save The Bay’s partnership and leadership can be, thanks to your support and generosity.
Looking ahead, we can’t let up. We need to build even broader coalitions with businesses, labor organizations, underserved communities, and everyone who benefits from a healthy, resilient Bay Area.
There is so much more we have to do to ensure our region remains vibrant and protected—and I like our chances.
Hima Tammineni
Former Fellow
When I was in middle school, my Girl Scout troop spent a day on the salt marsh picking up trash, collecting water samples, and trying pickleweed for the first time—a fascinating plant with a unique salt retention ability that has stuck with me ever since.
From that day on, I spent my summers in habitat restoration programs around the Bay, learning about the incredibly biodiverse region we’re so lucky to call home and doing my small part to preserve it.
Little middle school me could never have imagined that, over a decade later, I’d be working to preserve those same habitats in a new way—by spreading that passion to wider audiences and future generations.
After graduating college with a microbiology degree, no job, and a dream of telling stories for a living, I felt completely lost. I wanted to take action against climate change and help protect the beautiful ecosystem I grew up surrounded by, but I didn’t know where to start. That’s when I found Save The Bay’s Fellowship Program.
“A strong writer with a passion for the Bay Area’s environmental issues” – that’s what the Communications Fellow position asked for. I had been job searching for two months when I came across that description and Save The Bay’s website. After learning more about their mission, I knew I had found the perfect place to begin my professional journey.
Terry Young
Board Member
I’ve lived in many places—California, Washington, D.C., London, Belgium—but California has always been my first love. After college, I settled in the Bay Area, and I’ve been here ever since. That was 50 years ago, and I truly feel I belong here.
Nature has always grounded me in life and given me joy. So it is no surprise that, as a young professional, I wanted to work protecting the environment. I earned a Ph.D. in agricultural and environmental chemistry from UC Berkeley and spent 35 years bridging science and advocacy. It wasn’t always easy—being the only person in my graduate program was challenging at times—but it was worth it.
The 1970s were a good time for environmental progress. Landmark pieces of legislation were passed, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. It was rewarding to participate in the newly-developing environmental field.
I first encountered Save The Bay while serving on the Regional Water Quality Control Board. Their staff came to advocate for pollution control and community-focused decisions. I was so impressed with their effectiveness that when I was asked to join their board, I didn’t hesitate. It’s a great group to work with, where people from different backgrounds and perspectives are united by the shared goal of protecting the Bay.
Jesse McKeen-Scott
Restoration Program Manager
I think for Save The Bay, something that's really special is that—in so many of the other environmental education spaces that I was working, we were taking students away from their local community and driving them on a bus, or flying the plane to an environment and saying study this environment. Learn why you should protect it. This is a natural and beautiful space that you should really care a lot about. But I think for a lot of students it's like, why do I care about this space that I'm going to come to once in my life?
We're working so closely with communities that live a mile from the shoreline where we're working, or that could walk from their school to where we are, and that feels really special because it's not just saying, here's some foreign space that you should care about, but rather, this is your community.
Dianne Neal
Super Volunteer
After graduating, I worked seasonally in Yosemite and up in Oregon. I did many different jobs, but I finally decided to go back to school —as many of us nature lovers do. I became an elementary school teacher and for 22 years, I wove environmental education into every subject I taught. I would take my kids on lots of field trips, and I wanted them to understand science at an experiential level.
Now, as a volunteer, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Back then, I was the one receiving knowledge and inspiration from naturalists. Today, I’m on the other side. I feel like it's a time for me to give back something that I gained during those years. To be one of the ones imparting information on a different level.
It's so imperative, with climate change and with sea level rise, to hold up the banner and to be a beacon of light. Oftentimes people think they can't make a difference. And I think that showing the communities around the Bay that they can is going to be so important in the future.
When people ask what I do for my volunteer work, I always say “I save the Bay.” And I do it because I really believe in this work.
Nancy Strauch
Donor and Founding Member
It was the Army Corps of Engineers study that really got Sylvia, Kay, and Esther motivated. This study showed development filling a huge amount of San Francisco Bay so that all that was left was a river.
When you looked out at the Bay from the window in Kay Kerr’s house you could imagine what this would look like. The water would be gone, and there would just be this little stream out there. The rest would be garbage dumps and industrial development. I'm sure they were mortified when they thought about that because their idea was that the Bay was beautiful.
These were some very gracious ladies—very well spoken and extremely bright. They had ideas about what should happen in the world. And Sylvia in particular saw the Bay Area pretty much the way we see it now—completely accessible with shoreline parks, its beauty protected.
Discover more ways to give.
There are many ways you can make a gift to support a resilient Bay Area. You can give via Donor Advised Funds, stock, matching workplace gifts, or IRAs—all of which can be more tax-smart than giving cash.
You can learn about all of your giving options by visiting our Ways to Give page, or contacting Senior Leadership Gifts Officer Katie Reitter at kreitter@savesfbay.org.
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Save The Bay is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Gifts are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Our tax identification number is 94-6078420.