Briana Meier

Briana grew up in the wooded hills of northeastern Iowa on the banks of a muddy, meandering river. Since childhood she has sought to understand the nature of humanity’s relationship to the natural environment. Briana attended the School for Field Studies, Centre for Coastal Studies, in Bamfield, British Columbia in 1998, where she studied community-based natural resource management and coastal ecology. In 1999, she received a B.A. in environmental studies and philosophy from Cornell College, after which she participated in the Brower Legacy Leaders program through Earth Island Institute in San Francisco, California. There she had the opportunity to work with the great thinker and leader, David Brower. Upon moving to Madison, Wisconsin in 2000, Briana began work in Trout Unlimited’s National Volunteer Operations Office, where she helped to develop an urban rivers initiative and programs to diversify the organization’s volunteer leadership. In 2002, Briana began her current work as Restoration Manager for the natural areas at Troy Gardens, a community owned and managed park in Madison, where she directs a volunteer program and oversees the restoration of a maple woodland and native prairie. Briana plans to use her KCI research as a foundation for a new project to improve urban stormwater management practices in Madison, Wisconsin.