Staff Members

Mary Selkirk, Senior Mediator

Mary Selkirk has extensive experience in developing and mediating consensus-driven, collaborative public policy-making and planning efforts in California, with a focus on water and natural resources. Her collaborative policy-making experience is complemented by twenty-five years in the fields of clinical and organizational psychology.

Recently Ms Selkirk has facilitated numerous complex natural resources and strategic planning efforts in the San Francisco Bay area. Her clients include the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the State Coastal Conservancy, the San Francisco Estuary Project, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Presidio Trust, the Bay Area Open Space Council, the Sonoma County Agricultural and Open Space District, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Currently she is lead facilitator for the South San Francisco Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, under the auspices of the State Coastal Conservancy. She is lead facilitator for the San Francisco Bay Subtidal Habitat Goals Project, and recently facilitated the Coastal Conservancy’s Bay Area Watershed Plan development, the City of Fresno’s first Utility Advisory Commission, and the five-year strategic plan for the State of California’s Ocean Protection Council. She has led complex technical and policy workshops on topics such as native oyster restoration, California sea otter research priorities, land and ocean interaction modeling and management, and the impacts of public access on wildlife in San Francisco Bay.

Ms. Selkirk has developed and taught numerous workshops and trainings on collaborative processes and strategic planning for public agencies and is a guest lecturer at CSU Sacramento and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of City and Regional Planning .

Prior to affiliating with the Center in 2000, Ms. Selkirk served as special assistant to the Executive Director of the CALFED Bay Delta Program, where she had also served as a member of the Bay Delta Advisory Council.

Ms. Selkirk served as an elected Board Member of the East Bay Municipal Utility District from 1995-1998. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Oregon and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley.