Jane Dauster

I attribute much of my success to the incredible support offered from the amazing community I live in. When I started this current position, I focused on building accountability and showing the community we were going to be a good partner. By building that goodwill, trust, and consensus, the community has given back exponentially. The number of volunteer hours that people are giving to steward this state forest are growing annually because of building that relationship. Many times, when I've ever faced tough times in the career, community members have been able to advocate and help find resources, funding pathways, or provide perspective. Members of the larger "trail family" out there have been kind enough to help me find answers to complicated public lands challenges. I am just incredibly grateful for this journey with this big team of people that includes community members, volunteers, trail enthusiasts, and professional trail builders. The community support is so powerful because I'm an N of 1 in the agency. We have only one recreational state forest in North Carolina, and within that, only a single recreation specialist position. The initiatives I work on are not typical for this agency, so having that community partnership and helpful spirit has been essential. At the end of the day, it's not just the technical knowledge, it's the people skills that seal the deal.

Beyond the people skills and engagement with the community, another key to success in this realm of work is being creative and innovative to look for solutions to challenges. This is a really helpful skill to develop when working in an under-resourced field. You need to look back to your past experience that has landed you to this point for wisdom in how to address current and future challenges. Often, a way forward will surface when you look at the available resources and "tools in your toolbox," to creatively innovate ways to get the work done with what you have. The creativity comes in when you find you may need to put the "tools in the toolbox" together in different ways than you've done before to arrive at a solution to a complex challenge.

Existing in an N of 1 role requires courage, networking, and patience for success. It requires showing up and being brave enough to knock on lots of doors. When you exist in a unique N of 1 role, you often need to reach outside the boundaries of where you work. We often think that reaching out and cold calling someone to ask about a project or something we need help on requires courage. However, the courage actually comes after taking the step, not before.

When starting in a new role as the leader of a team, take the time to understand the work and the people before making immediate, broad sweeping changes. Take the time to observe, listen, and build trust. This will lead to understanding of your team and help with working across "silos." Be open to input and invite engagement with projects early in the process. If you are hoping to bring change to systems and structures, in many cases these are human structures and systems, so leveraging the understanding of the people and the trust that has been built is a great mechanism for driving that desired change.

One great way to build trust is to build up others: take the time to help your employees or volunteers achieve some of the things that are important to them. As a leader, they not only work for you to help you achieve what you need to get done, but you work for them. This builds goodwill for the long road and makes the connections between the team even stronger. Successful team initiatives are often best achieved by allowing team members to co-create the vision or the plan of action.

Make the time to think about how you lead. Work on being self-aware and fine tune those internal skills that you will need to navigate challenging, unpredictable dynamics. Work hard at having conversations worth having. The culture and climate in the workplace are created by these conversations.

Be true to yourself and don't let people or circumstances change who you are. It takes great strength to hold on to who you are and your values at times.

Work hard on both your scientific and technical knowledge as well as those soft skills, especially the people skills (interpersonal skills). In many cases, public lands and conservation careers require working as much with people as with the natural resource you are working to protect. Be a good listener. You often need to hear in order to be heard.

Have confidence in your abilities, experience, and background. You may have to take a while to process on the best way forward through a challenge. Have patience with and faith in yourself. Solutions have often presented themselves after periods of introspection that took time, where a "knee jerk" reaction would not have been the best way.

The biggest challenges in my field are balancing heavy public use with protecting natural resources, managing a unique role with limited staff, and restoring habitat after major storm damage. At the same time, there’s a huge opportunity to expand volunteer stewardship and design sustainable trails that ensure long-term enjoyment and conservation.

The values most important to me are stewardship of public lands, conservation, and community engagement, ensuring that natural places are preserved for future generations. Outside of work, I recharge by hiking, fly fishing, spending time with my family and friends, and taking long walks in the forest with my dog.