Ashley Boren

Sustainable Conservation, Executive Director

Ashley has directed the strategy, growth and operations of Sustainable Conservation since 1997. Ashley received a 2007 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for her unwavering commitment to innovative, balanced problem-solving to address a variety of critical environmental problems facing California.

Prior to Sustainable Conservation, Ashley spent eight years at Smith & Hawken, a mail order and retail gardening company, where she worked in finance, new business development, inventory planning and retail merchandising. She began her career at The Nature Conservancy in program development and fundraising. In addition to her work at Sustainable Conservation and her Board service with WSN, Ashley serves on the Boards of CalTrout and the CA Water Data Consortium and on UC California’s President’s Advisory Commission on Agriculture and Natural Resources.  She served on California’s State Board of Food & Agriculture from 2006 to 2022 advising Governors Schwarzenegger, Brown and Newsom and Secretaries of Agriculture Kawamura and Ross on issues of food, agriculture and natural resources. She also served on the Board of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation from 2002 to 2011 (the last two years as Chair), on Stanford Business School’s Alumni Consulting Team Board from 1995 to 2002 (the last three years as Chair), and Executive Committee of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute’s External Advisory Board at UC Davis from 2008-2018. Ashley has a BA in human biology, an MA in applied economics and an MBA from Stanford University.