Leadership
SCA's Leadership Team oversees a 501 (c)3 organization with an annual operating budget of $35 million and staff of approximately 200 who work in the field and in five offices across the country. SCA’s Board of Directors and National Council provide valuable guidance in the governance of our rapidly growing environmental conservation nonprofit.
Dale Penny, President and Chief Executive Officer
Dale has served as President and CEO of SCA since 1997. He has spent his professional life devoted to advancing the causes of youth development, experiential and outdoor education and intercultural understanding. Prior to joining SCA, Dale spent more than 20 years with Up With People, the international education and community service program, where he served as President and COO. He also worked as senior program director of the Colorado Boys Ranch Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving troubled and at-risk youth. Dale received his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University.
Valerie Bailey, Vice President/Strategic Planning and Development
Valerie has 30 years of experience with SCA and has been a member of the leadership group since 1989, including the role of Acting President in 1996 and 1997. In 2000, Valerie stepped away from SCA for several months to provide organizational development assistance to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. She returned in December 2000 to establish SCA’s Three Rivers Office in Pittsburgh, PA, which provides services throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In 2002, Valerie returned to SCA’s National Headquarters to assume the role of Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning and Development.
Valerie has served on several boards including the United Way of Sullivan County, the Fall Mountain Regional School District, the Meeting Waters YMCA and the Conservation Resources Committee of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Walter Burlack, Regional Director, Three Rivers Office
Wally has served as the Regional Director for the Three Rivers Region and Midwest for over six years. He came to SCA with 15 years of experience in industrial materials and hazardous waste management, including emergency response to hazardous material incidents. He has extensive expertise in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards and has provided education, training, and workshops in these areas for companies and students. Wally is a Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) certified trainer as well as a State of West Virginia registered mine trainer. He brings his extensive industrial and mining experience to SCA to engage young people in roles to mitigate the past practices of the industrial and mining era through conservation service.
Wally has his Masters in Public Management at the Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University, building upon a BS in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a board member of the Pennsylvania Resources Council, Construction Junction, and the Western PA Regional Environmental Education Center. He also serves on the advisory boards of Venture Outdoors, Bike Pittsburgh, and Young Preservationist Association, where he serves to conserve and preserve the resources of the natural and built environment.
Robert B. Coates, Vice President for Program
Bob directs all of SCA's conservation service field programming. Formerly, he served as Vice President for Program Development, as the California/Southwest and the Northeast Regional Director, and as Director of SCA’s New Hampshire Conservation Corps. Prior to working for SCA, Bob worked as a legislative assistant to US Senator Warren B. Rudman in Washington, DC, and he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon, West Africa from 1987-1989.
Bob received his B.A degree from the University of New Hampshire and holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the John Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University.
David (Dave) Evancich, Senior Vice President for Advancement
Dave recently joined the SCA team and brings extensive fundraising, communications, and marketing experience in the nonprofit world. Most recently, Dave was vice president for public affairs and marketing at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Prior to Dave's 10-year tenure with Dartmouth-Hitchcock, he held three integrated fundraising, marketing and communications positions with prominent national and regional nonprofits ranging in size from $50 million to $1.8 billion. During Dave's three year tenure at WWF, the organization launched and successfully completed (over 3 and 1/2 years) the comprehensive $150 million Living Planet Campaign. Total revenue for WWF-US increased from $$80.8 million in 1997 to $111.8 in 2000 as the Living Planet Campaign was drawing to a close - an increase of 38%.
In addition to having senior leadership accountability for SCA's impending campaign, we expect Dave to be a valuable, experienced leader, along with Jamie Patten and Steve Nolan, in accelerating and leveraging the collaboration among Advancement, Marketing and Business Development, and also be influential in helping fully engage our Program leadership and staff in the campaign effort. As Dave's background highlights, he has been responsible for managing and directing capacity building and development operations for large, complex organizations as part of his previous fundraising positions.
Building increased capacity for fundraising and revenue generation, and ensuring efficient, affective Advancement operations are in place to support the campaign, will be critical to SCA's future success. Dave will be based in the Charlestown, NH office. While originally we had planned for this position to be located in the DC office, we made this change as I believe Dave is the right person to lead our Advancement team into the next phase of our growth, and he is located here in the Upper Valley.
Reginald "Flip" Hagood, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives
Flip serves as the lead executive for SCA’s strategic initiatives and business development.Additionally, he is the Regional Director of the SCA Mid-Atlantic Southeast Office. Prior to joining SCA, Flip worked for the Department of the Interior for 30 years, and in his last position worked for the National Park Service as the Director of Training and Education . Flip is a former member of the Board of Directors for SCA and the Advisory Council for its Diversity Initiative. He currently is a member of the Governing Council of The Wilderness and a Trustee for the National Outdoor Leadership School. He also serves as a Director for the Board of the Institute for Conservation Leadership and the National Association for Interpretation.
Flip received his M.S. degree from NOVA University in Florida and his B.S. Degree from American University in Washington, D.C. He is a certified Career Counselor and has advanced training and education in the fields of Human Resource Development and Instructional Systems Design.
Kevin Hamilton, Vice President for Marketing and Communications
Kevin is SCA's Vice President for Marketing & Communications, where he directs integrated marketing, strategic communications, brand management, and public relations. He joined SCA in 1999 when he was appointed to pilot SCA's then-new public relations office. Prior to SCA, Kevin was counsel and media relations director for O'Neill Griffin (now Griffin, York & Krause), a leading advertising/communications company in Manchester, NH. For over 12 years, he served a variety of national and regional clients in finance, health care, retail, and engineering.
Kevin also has 12 years experience as a journalist in New York, Maine, and New Hampshire, earning numerous awards and a regional Emmy nomination for his coverage of the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the NH Presidential Primary, and other events.
A native of New York City, Kevin’s introduction to the outdoors came early during family vacations to Maine. Eventually, his family moved to New England where he earned a degree at Northeastern, adopted the Red Sox, and discovered the wonders of Baxter State Park. Today he is married with two step-daughters (one of whom recently served on an SCA trail crew) and two adult children from a previous marriage. In his spare time, Kevin enjoys photography, hiking, paddling, snowshoeing, music, and anything Scottish.
Kim Henning, Vice President for Human Resources
Kim joined SCA in 1999 as our Director of Human Resources and was promoted to Vice President in 2002. Kim has 19 years experience in HR and began her career in New York with the Wyatt Company (now Watson Wyatt), followed by Globus & Cosmos (an international touring company) in Denver, Colorado and back to New York with Multimedia Entertainment (the former talk show division of Gannett Co.). Kim also worked in both Los Angeles and Rochester, NY in the human resources arena before arriving at SCA. She received her Bachelor’s in Psychology from the College of New Rochelle, Magna Cum Laude and has taken graduate courses in organizational/industrial psychology and counseling. She is a current member and former board member of the River Valley HR Association, a member of the Society for Human Resources Management and is certified as a SPHR (Senior Professional of Human Resources).
Kim is a native of Charlestown, NH where SCA is headquartered and is married with three young children. She is involved with Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and a former parent’s council member of Partners in Health (a statewide parents group for children with chronic illnesses). Kim enjoys reading, swimming, watching NFL football, art, and sewing.
Steve Nolan, Senior Vice President for Business Development
Steve Nolan joined SCA in August as the new Senior Vice President for Business Development. Steve comes to SCA with an extensive background in sales and marketing, strategic planning and product development, and has worked in both the for- and not-for profit arenas.
Most recently, Steve has served as Vice President of Strategic Marketing for the American Councils for International Education, where he has had responsibility for bringing in new revenue streams through strategic partnerships as well as the creation of new products and services in the fields of critical languages curriculum, student/faculty exchange, online testing and professional development. Since the major funding partner for these programs is the U.S. State Department, he brings a knowledge of working with federal agencies. Steve has also had success in creating partnerships and joint ventures with many colleges, universities, higher education associations, consortia and private corporations. Throughout his career, Steve has built sales and business development capacity from the ground up and managed business development in organizations where it was vital to work collaboratively with regional and international offices. He has been very involved applying technology in the success of business development initiatives.
Steve lives in the DC area and will be based in our Arlington office.
Jamie Patten, Senior Vice President for Marketing
Jamie joined SCA in July as the Senior Vice President for Marketing and brings an extensive background in marketing and communications. Most recently, Jamie worked with the National Association of State Park Directors, where she initiated the America’s State Parks Youth Ambassador Program, one of the group's signature national initiatives. In addition, Jamie's work as a consultant with Outdoor Nation has helped to establish new communications channels for the organization, to plan and execute five regional youth summits, establish a national partnership with America’s State Parks, and to support the marketing and communications efforts of the brand overall.
Previously, Jamie worked with the National Park Foundation where, as Senior Vice President Communications and Corporate Relations she led the Foundation’s brand, media, digital and partnership marketing capabilities and oversaw strategic corporate alliances and fundraising. Jamie guided the creative development of the Foundation’s public media channels including the founding of Parks magazine where she served as editor-in-chief.
Jamie also led the Foundation’s corporate partnership team that successfully developed significant charitable, sponsorship, sustainability and volunteer programs with leading corporate brands including ARAMARK, Bank of America, The Coca Cola Company, Ford Motor Company, Hertz, Merrell, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Macy’s, Olympus, Underwriters Laboratories, and UPS.
Jay Satz, Vice President for Western Initiatives
Jay is responsible for building partnerships with agencies in SCA's northwest region, which includes Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. He led SCA's Mount Rainier Recovery initiative in response to massive flood damage in western Washington national parks and forests in 2006, which was honored with the Secretary of Interior’s Cooperative Conservation Award in 2008. Jay is a senior consultant for SCA's risk management program. As a standing member of the National Wilderness Risk Managers Committee since 1995, he is an often-published expert in this field and presents annually at the Wilderness Risk Managers Symposium. He also directed SCA's development of the written curriculum for teaching traditional conservation work skills, which was published by The Mountaineers as the premier trails and conservation restoration manual, Lightly on the Land.
Richard Seaman, Chief Financial Officer
Richard joined SCA as Chief Financial Officer in 2005, after spending 19 years as a bank senior executive and management consultant. Most recently, he was Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Independent Bank Corp/Rockland Trust Company ($2b Boston area commercial bank); Principal, Danielson Associates (troubled bank turnaround specialists); SVP Corporate Development; James Madison Limited (1.5b Washington, DC commercial bank); and Furash & Co. (Bank consultants). Richard spent the early part of his career with Morgan Stanley and Arthur Andersen. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University and his MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
Richard serves on the Board of the Greater Claremont Chamber of Commerce, is a call firefighter, maple sugarer, graduate of Leadership NH, and father of four. Richard and his wife, Liza Draper, moved from Boston six years ago and live on Four Meadows Farm with their two younger children.
Jay Watson, Western Regional Director
Jay joined SCA in November 2004. His responsibilities duties include program and partnership development, major donor, foundation, and corporate advancement in the West, government relations, media outreach, and staff management. Prior to joining the staff of SCA, Jay spent nineteen years with The Wilderness Society, fourteen of which were in California, where he was regional director. His past positions include five years as a wilderness ranger with the U.S. Forest Service in the Trinity Alps Wilderness in northern California and three years as executive director of the Camp Unalayee Association, a non profit wilderness youth camp, also in the Trinity Alps.
Jay serves on the Board of Directors of the California Fire Safe Council and graduated from Humboldt State University with a B.S. in Wildlife Management. Jay and his wife Kathleen live in the Town of Sonoma, and have two sons, Thomas (18) and Charlie (16).
Scott Weaver, Senior Vice President for Government and Agency Affairs
Scott Weaver has spent the last 30 years serving SCA. Prior to his current position, he served as Vice President of Programs, as Director of the High School and Resource Assistant Programs, and he worked in the field as an SCA Conservation Work Crew Leader. Before joining SCA, Scott worked for the National Park Service in Yosemite National Park for nine years.
Scott serves on the Advisory Board of American Trails and is a member of the Association of National Park Rangers, the National Parks and Conservation Association, the Yosemite Fund, and the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps.
