Our Staff

The Forest Bridges staff is a passionate group of professionals dedicated to the vision of 21st-century sustainable forest management.

DENISE ANN BARRETT

Executive Director

Denise Ann Barrett is a visionary, strategic, collaborative, and mission-driven executive. She brings more than 25 years of experience developing, leading, and managing more than a dozen complex organizations and programs in the public, private, and non-profit spheres in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the U.S., including at local, regional, and national levels. Her creative efforts have helped strengthen local food and forest system value chains, increased sustainability, enhanced community resilience, and improved conditions for populations under emergency duress and displacement, oppressed by unjust systems and structures, struggling with high-risk environments, or recovering from civil war and natural disasters.

Denise comes to Forest Bridges following a ten-year stint at the City of Portland building and managing the collaborative, consensus-driven Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization (rdpo.net) in the five-county Portland metropolitan region. There, Denise managed a complex, dynamic and inclusive structure and strategic process supporting dozens of local and regional governments, special districts, businesses, and local organizations, to agree on and advance a unified mission, vision, and program of investments to enhance disaster preparedness and resilience for a region of 2.4 million people.

From 2020-2021, Denise was part of the regional multi-agency coordinated response to COVID-19 and the Labor Day wildfires. During that time, she also helped the region’s fire agencies advance their urban-rural interface wildfire mitigation planning work and the RDPO to deepen its equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts, including building partnerships with community-based organizations to improve disaster preparedness and resilience for BIPOC and other COVID-19 disproportionately impacted communities.

Prior to the RDPO, Denise served as executive director of the Southwest Virginia-Northeast Tennessee-based Appalachian Sustainable Development, whose mission focuses on advancing sustainable forestry and local food systems development. She helped the organization through a critical strategic change process to set them on a more solid organizational footing.

Throughout her career, Denise has applied and honed skills as a creative and nimble change leader/process facilitator, systems planner, cross-cultural communicator, and integrator across multi-sectors, including community-driven development, local governance/leadership development, public health, water and sanitation, education, sustainable/regenerative agriculture and agroforestry, disaster resilience/preparedness, emergency management, and humanitarian protection/human rights.

Denise holds a Master’s in International Administration from the School for International Training in Vermont, with an emphasis on community development, and a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. She has also studied healing science/energetic healing at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing in Florida, and water science and healing with water at the Masaru Emoto Organization in Japan. Denise started career in screenwriting in 2021, drafting two full-length movie scripts.

SHARLYN COX

Admin-Finance 

Support Specialist

Sharlyn Cox joins Forest Bridges as our new Admin-Finance Support Specialist. Her previous experience has been as a Realtor, HVAC Business Manager, IT Office Manager, and freelance bookkeeper.


She earned her Associates of Science Degree in Agriculture Business while working full time and raising an infant. To say she can multi-task while keeping her eyes on the goal is an understatement!

Originally from Central California, Sharlyn moved to Oregon in 2005 after a family vacation along the Oregon Coast. The natural beauty and multiple opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors led her to relocate to Roseburg where she has put down new roots.

In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, hiking, camping, and day trips to the Beach. An animal lover and #boymom, she lives in Melrose with her husband, sons, an Arabian mare, and two Gerberian Shepskies who think they are hooman.

ZENA GREEN

Tribal Liaison

Project Assistant

Zena Green joined Forest Bridges on October 1, 2023 to serve as our first Tribal Liaison, assigned to the BLM Pacific Northwest (PNW) Tribal Forest Restoration and Native Seed Pilot Project, managed by the OSU College of Forestry. Link to the project: https://tek.forestry.oregonstate.edu/tek-lab-projects  Zena is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians and will soon graduate from OSU with a B.S. in Natural Resources. She has a strong foundation in sustainable forestry practices and expresses a deep appreciation for Tribal land stewardship and genuine commitment to promoting the integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into conservation initiatives and active forest management.

© Made with Magic by TimberTown Media. All Rights Reserved.