Speakers Bureau

The Rivers Foundation of the Americas can provide you with a speaker for a conference or community event, on topics ranging from tribal issues to watershed management to clean water and human health.

The Rivers Foundation of the Americas includes accomplished and interesting speakers who are available to talk on a variety of fascinating topics. Our speakers bureau is available to talk to groups all over the world. The bureau offers seasoned speakers with a combined 200 plus years of experience in environmental protection, restoration, and world politics. We can fill your needs for everything from intimate home-based gatherings, community events, to large conventions, conferences and lecture halls. To arrange appearances for any of our speakers or to inquire about other topics and people associated with the Rivers Foundation, please contact us at or at the individual contact addresses below.

Mark DuBois

Mark Dubois is a charismatic and energetic idea generator and tireless campaigner for the world's rivers. He is a co-founder and board member emeritus of Friends of the River, California's statewide organization working for the protection of rivers, their flora and fauna and for sustainable water development. Mark also co-founded International Rivers Network. He organized the first international dam-fighters conference - a five-day conference and tour with 70 NGO leaders from 25 countries. Mark served as International Coordinator for Earth Day 1990 and Earth Day 2000; Mark coordinated global outreach and developed the seven-person international staff plus the International Council and International Strategic Partners. Mark also is the founder and director of WorldWise. Before his career as an environmental organizer and activist, Mark co-founded and operated "etc", the Environmental Traveling Companions, where he organized and guided inner-city youth and disabled individuals down whitewater rivers. Mark is a founding board member of the Rivers Foundation.

Speaking Topics:

• Growing global strength of NGO's
• River conservation
• International challenges and opportunities
• Citizens impact on World Bank /IMF
• Inspiring and challenging people for the greater good

Charles "Chuck" Hudson

Charles Hudson, a Mandan/Hidatsah tribal member, is a 1983 graduate of Washington State University. He speaks passionately about tribal issues, salman and environmental justice among other topics. He has spent several years working in media and Native American Education in the Pacific Northwest. He is currently the Public Affairs Manager for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, the policy and technical coordinating agency for the Columbia River Treaty Tribes (Umatilla, Warm Springs, Yakama and Nez Perce) in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Oregon Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and is a member of the Hidatsa Tribe from Fort Berthold, North Dakota. His passion for river protection and restoration work comes in part from his experience of being flooded off his family's tribal homelands by the rising waters of the Fort Berthold reservoir when he was four years of age. Chuck is a founding board member of the Rivers Foundation.

Speaking Topics:

• Tribal issues
• Diversity in organizations
• Environmental justice
• Salmon, culture and economic

Pamela Hyde

Pamela Hyde has a wealth of experience and cogent analysis about her passion - the rivers of the Southwest United States. An irrepressible whitewater rafter, she has been involved with rivers in the Southwest for fourteen years and is one of the region's top experts on the Colorado River watershed. In the early 1990's, as the Arizona Streams and Wetlands Coordinator at Arizona State Parks, Pam conducted a statewide rivers assessment for the state of Arizona. She worked on river protection issues in the Southwest for over four years at the Southwest Regional Office of American Rivers, serving two and a half years as Southwest Regional Director. In 1999 she joined the Glen Canyon Institute as the organization's first Executive Director. Pam formed the nonprofit Southwest Rivers in 2000 and worked on Colorado River issues basinwide as its Executive Director until 2003. Currently she is the Colorado River Coordinator for the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, and functions as that organization's representative on the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group. Pam serves on the advisory board for the Water Education Foundation's Colorado River Project, and speaks throughout the West on Colorado River conservation and legal issues. Pam received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Amherst College in 1985. She received her J.D. from Duke University School of Law and her M.A. in Natural Resource Economics and Policy from Duke University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, both in 1989. She is a member of the State Bar of Arizona. Pam is on the board of directors of RFA.

Speaking Topics:

• Colorado River issues: basin-wide, Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River Delta
• Adaptive management
• River advocacy
• Water law, especially law of Colorado River
• Environmental nonprofits, including startup and fundraising

Pete Lavigne, Rivers Foundation President/CEO

Peter M. Lavigne, J.D. , M.S.E.L., is an environmental attorney, educator and writer. He is the founder and a board member of the Rivers Foundation of the Americas. He is an intense and quietly passionate campaigner and organizer for environmental protection and restoration. He regularly presents keynote and plenary and other panel presentations at meetings and conferences throughout North America. Pete has served as executive director of the Westport River Watershed Alliance and the Merrimack River Watershed Council; co-founded the Coalition For Buzzards Bay and the New England Coastal Campaign; worked for American Rivers in the Northeast coordinating issues in Quebec, New England and New York; was Deputy Director of the Pacific regional group For the Sake of the Salmon, and has worked in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Bolivia and Turkey. Peter was also director of River Network's national River Leadership Program where he spent four years organizing river watershed protection and restoration organizations in the United States and Canada. At River Network he helped establish over twenty statewide and regional river watershed protection organizations from New England to Alaska.

An avid sea kayaker and mountain climber, Peter founded and teaches in the Watershed Management Professional Program of the Executive Leadership Institute and is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Public Administration Graduate Program at Portland State University. He holds a B.A. in Government and Geology from Oberlin College, and a Juris Doctor and Master of Studies in Environmental Law cum laude from Vermont Law School.

As RFA CEO, Peter taps a personal network of several thousand environmental protection and restoration experts throughout the world. He is known and respected for strategic vision, love of innovation, skill in implementation, and for sensitive and effective work with students, educators, indigenous organizations, government agencies, businesses, and local activists everywhere.

Speaking Topics:

• Re-Thinking Green Philanthropy.
• Solving the Gordian Knot: the Colorado River in the 21st Century.
• Megalinkages: River Protection and the Americas.
• Bloody Rocks, Green Lagoons and Icy Waters: Ed Abbey, Aldo Leopold and the Meaning of Life and Death in Wilderness.
• MegaLinkages: Watershed Planning, Systems Analysis and Tipping Points
• Cultural Myths and the Future of Water In the West.
• Scale, Boundaries, Turf and Culture: Rules for Collaborative Decision-Making.
• Water Boundaries.
• Cultural Myths, Concrete Results And Whoops Again.
• Damning Dams: The Politics and Policy of Dams and Dam Removals.
• Nary a Drop to Drink: Human Rights, Environmental Justice and Global Water Policy.
• Culture, the Value of Place, and Large Ecosystem Protection.
• Mission Driven Investment Policies

Hal Nelson

Hal Thomas Nelson is in the final throes of his dissertation in the Ph.D. program in Public Administration and Policy, with an emphasis on Climate Policy, at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. In March 2001, he co-authored Extended Producer Responsibility and Product Take-Back: A Program and Policy Assessment for the PSU Center for Watershed and Community Health. He received his degree in Finance from the University of Idaho in 1989 and moved to Chicago to become a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where he was an institutional futures and options broker and analyst. He received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1998. A water enthusiast, Hal was the Idaho state champion in the breaststroke as a youth and is now an avid river rafter on the Middle Fork of the Salmon and other rivers in Idaho. Hal serves as Treasurer of the Rivers Foundation and is a founding board member.

Speaking Topics:

• Climate change and watershed impacts
• Clean water, human health
• Global toxins
• Watershed governance
• Mission Driven investment Policy

Peter Paquet

Dr. Peter Paquet is the director of the Watershed Management Professional Program in the Executive Leadership Institute at Portland State University. He retires in early 2003 as the Fish and Wildlife Division Manager of the Northwest Power Planning Council, a regional agency overseeing the Columbia River watershed hydroelectric system. An energetic and peripatetic speaker and activist, Peter has been on the Council staff since 1983. Initially he was responsible for the water budget and Council dealings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He was lead staffer in the development of protected areas and is currently taking the lead in wildlife mitigation planning. He came to the Council from the Oregon Department of Energy where he served as an environmental specialist. Before that, Peter worked for NASA and taught biology at Santa Clara University in California. Peter has undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology and a Ph.D. in environmental science and natural resources from Portland State University. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles including "Adaptive Strategies for the Management of Ecosystems: The Columbia River Experience" published by the American Fisheries Society. In January 2000, Dr. Paquet represented PSU and the Watershed Management Professional Program as an advisor to the G.A.P. Project on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Turkey. In addition to his role as the WMPP Director, Dr. Paquet teaches the WMPP Columbia Watershed Salmon and the Endangered Species Act course. Peter is a board member of the Rivers Foundation.

Speaking Topics:

• Water issues
• Watershed planning
• Biodiversity issues
• Colorado River fish and wildlife issues

Contact Information

Mark Dubois

353 Wallace Way NE #12
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Chuck Hudson

CRITFC
729 NE Oregon, Suite 200
Portland, OR 97232

Pamela Hyde

P.O. Box 1845
Flagstaff, AZ 86002
(928) 214-6492

Peter Lavigne

Rivers Foundation of the Americas
1109 Furhelm St. 
 Sitka, AK 99835 -7118
(907) 747-6879 or (503)-781-9785

Hal Nelson

4528 SE Clay
Portland, OR 97215

Peter Paquet

Rivers Foundation of the Americas
3619 SE Milwaukie Ave.
Portland, OR 97202-3858
(503) 274-7704