Wendy Schmidt, President and Founder of the Schmidt Family Foundation, shares about her love of the ocean and how she’s translated it into meaningful conservation efforts in a recent interview with The Chronicle of Philanthropy. (For non-membership access, you can read the full article in The Associated Press).
Ensuring the health of our oceans is integral to our work at The 11th Hour Project in our support of clean air and water, healthy food and renewable energy. Our cross-programmatic initiative, Healthy Soils Healthy Seas, was established to promote awareness of and inspire action that centers around the interconnectivity between land and ocean ecosystems; much of this work is Indigenous-led. Our work in California benefitted early on from Wendy’s relationship with A-dae Romero-Briones from First Nations Development Institute, which, as the article mentions, grew out of a chance book club selection at the Foundation.
Today, we support partners like the Tribal Marine Stewards Network, for example, which is revitalizing members’ cultural stewardship across the lands and seas of their territories. Save California Salmon, another partner, is a driver of policy change and community advocacy for Northern California Tribes working to protect and restore their region’s rivers and fisheries.
For more on our cross-programmatic initiatives, visit our Emerging Strategies page.