(Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of profiles of your neighbors, community members with interesting backgrounds who bring vibrancy to Oakmont.)
Marlena Tremont
In a meeting, Bruce Hartsough, who moved from Los Altos to Oakmont with his wife Lesli Lee in 2015, is one of the quiet ones who mostly listens. But when he talks, his comments are insightful, thought-provoking and often very funny. So, people listen.
Particularly the people at Bay Nature, where Hartsough spent 10 years on the Board of Directors, serving as Board President for the last five while also leading the search for a new executive director last year – an unpaid but all-consuming position.
Berkeley-based Bay Nature publishes the quarterly Bay Nature Magazine and offers premiere hikes, tours and presentations throughout the Bay area. Hartsough believed that there was a need to rethink the organization and what it provided to outdoor enthusiasts. Under his leadership, the Bay Nature mission statement was rewritten, a strategic plan developed, and staff development incentives put into place.
He also changed the way the organization presented itself to the public by encouraging a new voice and vision for the Bay Nature magazine. “It had all the elements of a very good publication,” says Hartsough. “Fabulous pictures and informative, polite, and non-controversial articles about nature. But I wanted us to look at the harder environmental issues, even if it meant we were airing controversial positions, as long as we presented both sides so readers could decide for themselves.”
Take, for example, the story titled “Conservationists who Hunt Describe their Connection to Nature.” While this seems like a contradiction, the article examines the contributions that groups like Ducks Unlimited make to preserve and regenerate wetlands and forests. Another recent article looks at the conflict between the Dungeness crab fishing industry and humpback whales due to warming waters and changing migratory patterns.
Hartsough’s biggest source of pride is the new Bay Nature website where the team turned an antiquated website that simply republished magazine articles into a robust site with rich content, averaging more than 100,000 page views per month.
Hartsough has an MS and MBA from Ohio State. Self-described as a nomadic tech leader, he worked with Bell Laboratories on early network technology, with start-up company, Jamcracker, an early cloud computing, and at Intuit, starting as vice president of software engineering before he became the head of Corporate Sustainability.
Hartsough is a recent graduate of the Urgent Optimism program, a one-year, international training program offered by the non-profit think tank, Institute for the Future. It is this longer-term, strategic thinking that Hartsough hopes to bring to Oakmont where he serves as a member of the Long-Range Planning committee and on September 13 when he will be speaking to the Oakmont Futures Club about how to think about the future.
“I really like being part of this community,” Hartsough says. “Oakmont is a place where people can make a difference by helping their neighbors and the community as a whole. There are so many incredible people here with unique backgrounds and different viewpoints, and because I believe everyone’s perspective is valuable, I look forward to seeing what we can do together.”