#41: Colorful living with Janelle Pietrzak
Janelle Pietrzak is a textile artist and co-founder of All Roads design studio, based in the high desert near Joshua Tree. With a history of over ten years working in...
Wendy Millet is the Ranch Director at TomKat Ranch, a 1,800-acre grass-fed cattle ranch located on the California Coast. Wendy has devoted her entire career to conservation and land stewardship, serving in various capacities at well-known conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund. And for the past 10+ years, she’s been helping the team at TomKat achieve its mission “to provide healthy food on working lands in a way that regenerates the planet and inspires others to action.”
In this discussion, Ed and Wendy covered a range of topics including the history of TomKat ranch and its current agricultural initiatives, the ranch’s commitment to science-based data collection and analysis, what Wendy looks for in potential team members, and a few exciting projects that are in the ranch’s near future. They also talked about Wendy’s personal connection to the land and her career trajectory, including how she fell in love with western landscapes, her love of transcendentalist authors, her professional experiences with for- and non-profit organizations, and much more.
Our Guest
Wendy Millet is director of TomKat Ranch. Before TomKat, she worked for 20 years in conservation focused on economic solutions to working lands including at The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, and Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. She serves on the boards of the Western Landowners Alliance and the California Council of Land Trusts and is co-founder of Gallop Ventures LLC an equine leadership program to facilitate human/nature connections.
Resources
Grassfed Cattle by Julius Ruechel
Holistic Management by Allan Savory
Point Blue Conservation Science
What Your Food Ate by David Montgomery
American Transcendentalism - John Muir, Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Nature Fix by Florence Williams
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
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