Sara Violett

Since graduating with a BS in Botany from Humboldt State in 2011 until joining the Ascent team in the early spring of 2023, I enjoyed various field botany jobs throughout California, Oregon, and Nevada working for the US Forest Service, National Park Service, and Great Basin Institute. These jobs brought me from the foothills to the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada mapping rare and invasive plant species. Other positions brought me to remote regions of the Great Basin in Oregon and Nevada for ecological and vegetation monitoring. One season, I had the opportunity to work in the diverse Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and Lassen Volcanic National Park conducting vegetation monitoring. Eventually my career led me to managing and training the same field crews that I had been part of and preparing the NEPA documents and other reports in support of the projects for which I assisted in the fieldwork.

As a botanist, I am passionate about supporting projects that promote forest resilience and support functioning ecosystems. At Ascent, I have been able to support projects that do just that by working on wildfire and ecological resilience projects with the US Forest Service and local utility districts in the Sierra Nevada. In my free time, I spend as much time as possible rock climbing and traveling.