This retreat has been years in the making and shaped by many conversations with leaders in the field. The following people have devoted countless hours to the genesis of this project. And several will attend to help guide conversations and facilitate conversations.
The Cobb Mountain Leadership Retreat is intentionally designed to be different from a traditional conference.
Rather than keynote-heavy programming, the retreat is built around facilitated conversations, collaborative learning, and the collective wisdom of the people in the room.
Every session is designed to encourage participation, honest dialogue, and practical exchange between leaders working across the social sector.
Throughout the retreat, facilitators create the conditions for meaningful conversations by helping participants:
Their role is not simply to teach—but to guide discussions that allow every participant to contribute.
Learn directly from peers who understand the realities of leading mission-driven organizations.
Discuss real challenges, successes, and lessons learned in an open and supportive environment.
Leave with actionable insights that can be applied immediately within your organization and community.
Each learning track is facilitated to encourage meaningful discussion among professionals with shared leadership responsibilities.
Leadership under pressure, organizational strategy, and resilience.
Governance, executive partnership, and effective board leadership.
Fundraising strategy, donor cultivation, and campaign planning.
Organizational systems, operational planning, and team culture.
Grantmaking strategy, partnerships, and philanthropic practice.
Building confidence, leadership networks, and long-term growth.
Cleveland is the founder and CEO of the Potrero Group. a leading executive search and strategy firm. An accomplished organizational leader in entrepreneurship and the environment for the past 25 years, Cleveland has worked and consulted widely with startups, businesses, nonprofits, foundations, and governmental organizations. He currently directs the Executive Leadership Program at the University of California, Davis, and he has previously held faculty appointments at UC Berkeley and Georgetown University. He works with hundreds of board members and executives annually.
For nearly two decades, Sarah has partnered with nonprofits—from healthcare organizations to community foundations to educational mavericks—to sharpen their strategy, clarify their voice, and elevate their impact. In 2024, she founded Brand & Board, a consultancy dedicated exclusively to mission-driven organizations, helping them build focused strategies, compelling messaging, and high-performing boards equipped to lead with conviction, confidence, and strong governance.
For nearly two decades, Sarah has partnered with nonprofits—from healthcare organizations to community foundations to educational mavericks—to sharpen their strategy, clarify their voice, and elevate their impact. In 2024, she founded Brand & Board, a consultancy dedicated exclusively to mission-driven organizations, helping them build focused strategies, compelling messaging, and high-performing boards equipped to lead with conviction, confidence, and strong governance.
Sarah has shared her insights at conferences nationwide, including Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) International, Opera America, California Association of Independent Schools, California Primary Care, Association and AFP Golden Gate / Silicon Valley.
An active nonprofit board leader herself, Sarah has served in leadership roles on multiple boards, including guiding the successful completion of a capital campaign for Napa County’s leading mental health services agency.
Jason Morris is the Environment + Climate Lead at the Pisces Foundation, where he designs and implements grantmaking strategies focused on the enduring capacity, strong networks, and collaborative action needed for lasting environmental progress. He oversees portfolio strategies centered on scaling global super pollutant mitigation to slow near-term warming and improve public health, alongside advancing clean water protections and climate resilience across the U.S. Throughout a 30-year career as both an executive NGO practitioner and philanthropic leader, Jason’s work emphasizes authentic partnership and equitable funding across the entire network of leadership, from work rooted in community to national and international coalitions. He holds an M.A. in nonprofit administration from the University of San Francisco.
Jason Morris is the Environment + Climate Lead, designing and implementing grantmaking strategies focused on the enduring capacity, strong networks, and collaborative action needed for lasting environmental progress. In this role, he oversees portfolio strategies centered on scaling global super pollutant mitigation to slow near- term warming and deliver immediate clean air and health benefits for communities, as well as advancing clean water protections, access, and climate resilience across the United States.
Throughout a career spanning more than three decades as both an executive practitioner and a philanthropic leader, Jason has approached environmental progress by collaboratively building shared agendas that help fields and movements achieve
impact at scale.
Jason’s approach is rooted in the belief that durable social change requires both structural alignment and deep, human-centric connection. Joining Pisces in 2015, he served as Senior Program Officer for Environmental Education for nine years before taking on the expanded role leading the Foundation’s environment and climate portfolio. Earlier in his career, he was Executive Vice President at NatureBridge and served for six years as Board Chair of the Blue Sky Funders Forum, aligning national philanthropy around equitable access to nature and environmental learning.
Guided by a commitment to authentic partnership, Jason’s work emphasizes trust-filled relationship building and equitable funding across the entire network of leaders and organizations required to solve complex problems, from work rooted in community to national and international coalitions. His career has taken him from the Navajo Reservation in Utah to the San Francisco Bay and national parks across the country, giving him a deep appreciation for place-based wisdom and the transformative power of shared wonder in nature.
Jason holds an M.A. in nonprofit administration from the University of San Francisco and a B.A. in anthropology from Fort Lewis College. Outside of his work, he finds grounding in family and friends, wilderness immersion, and live music.
Wilford authored In Our Hands and The Tactics of Hope, has spent over five decades exploring global challenges. As a U.S. diplomat in Asia, a consultant across four continents, and a publisher of a global affairs magazine, his work reflects deep international experience. Welch provides real-world leadership, diplomacy, and innovation.
Wilford developed future planning scenarios for Citibank, Toyota, the U.S. Navy, and the Korean Government. He also led the Wealth of Nations Index research, measuring nations’ progress across 63
economic, social, and technological variables.
Wilford authored In Our Hands and The Tactics of Hope, has spent over five decades exploring global challenges. As a U.S. diplomat in Asia, a consultant across four continents, and a publisher of a global affairs magazine, his work reflects deep international experience. Welch provides real-world leadership, diplomacy, and innovation.
Wilford developed future planning scenarios for Citibank, Toyota, the U.S. Navy, and the Korean Government. He also led the Wealth of Nations Index research, measuring nations’ progress across 63
economic, social, and technological variables.
Passionate about environmental education, Wilford chaired
NatureBridge Golden Gate and the National Outdoor Leadership
School (NOLS). In 1994, he led a NOLS team on Mount Everest, removing 5,000 pounds of waste and introducing the “Leave No Trace” ethic.
Since joining the company as a writer in 1994, Lisa has brought her passions for storytelling and teaching to helping executives shape narratives that reframe possible futures for their organizations. Her clients have included Apple, Disney, Gap, Herman Miller, IBM, Old Navy, PBS, Starbucks, and Sundance.
Since joining the company as a writer in 1994, Lisa has brought her passions for storytelling and teaching to helping executives shape narratives that reframe possible futures for their organizations. Her clients have included Apple, Disney, Gap, Herman Miller, IBM, Old Navy, PBS, Starbucks, and Sundance.
Lisa holds a B.A. in English and Poetry from Stanford University and an M.A. in Fiction Writing from the University of California at Davis. A native Californian, she reads and collects regional cookbooks, studies Italian, and functions as her Italian-American family’s historian and genealogist. She and her husband live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bill’s professional journey has allowed him to work in some of the most beautiful places on the planet, including Honolulu, Hawaii; the Vatican; Yosemite Valley; Marin County; Skywalker Ranch; and Fargo, North Dakota.
Bill’s professional journey has allowed him to work in some of the most beautiful places on the planet, including Honolulu, Hawaii; the Vatican; Yosemite Valley; Marin County; Skywalker Ranch; and Fargo, North Dakota.
For the past 14 years, Bill served as the designer and director of the Omidyar Fellows, a cross-sector leadership development program in Honolulu, Hawaii, supported by philanthropists Pam and Pierre Omidyar.
Previously, he was a partner at La Piana Consulting, where he led the leadership practice.
His professional background includes serving as Head of Training and Development at Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound George Lucas’s visual effects and sound firms as well as Director of Human Resources at Yosemite National Institutes. He also managed to find a way to play an Imperial dignitary in the re-release of Return of the Jedi.
Bill holds graduate degrees in systematic theology and clinical counseling. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist and is trained in emotional and cognitive responses to disaster and trauma.
Throughout his career, he has worked as a teacher, facilitator, therapist, writer, executive coach, consultant, and aggregator of the wisdom of others. He has taught on the graduate faculty at the University of San Francisco and served as an executive coach at the Stanford Medical Leadership Academy at Stanford Medical School in Palo Alto.
He treasures his role as a spouse, father, and grandfather.
Bill is currently the Poet in Residence for The Wellbeing Project in Paris, a global organization that promotes inner wellbeing for changemakers.
As he approaches the later stages of his career but is not yet ready to retire Bill looks forward to discovering what comes next and how to write this new chapter of his life. He continues to be confused about how a 35-year-old man like himself can have celebrated 71 birthdays.
Raoul Goff is the Founder and CEO of Insight Editions and publisher of Mandala Publishing and Earth Aware Editions. His work supports environmental storytelling, experiential education, sustainability, and the connection between people and the natural world.
Raoul is the founder and publisher of Insight Editions and its subsidiaries, Mandala Publishing and Earth Aware Editions, which present the diverse voices of today’s leading environmentalists, photojournalists, cultural commentators, artists, and activists.
Raoul first developed a passion for the environment while hiking in Hawaii, where he felt a deep connection with the earth. A firm believer in the value of experiential education, he wants every young person to have the opportunity to understand the important interconnections of life on our planet.
In addition to supporting NatureBridge and Woods Hole, Raoul supports many organizations working in sustainability. He also runs a 42-acre organic farm on the Hamakua Coast in Hawaii and is the driving force behind Mandala Springs.
Cleveland is the founder and principal of the Potrero Group. An accomplished organizational leader in entrepreneurship and the environment for the past 25 years, Cleveland has worked and consulted widely with startups, businesses, nonprofits, foundations, and governmental organizations, including the National Park Service, Resources Legacy Fund, and Grand Canyon Conservancy. He currently teaches Social Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Cleveland’s expertise spans strategic planning, business planning, board development, public/private partnerships, entrepreneurship, network analysis, and innovation. He was formerly the executive director of the UC Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and co-founded and served as director of the Institute at Golden Gate. He also held executive level positions at Headlands Institute of NatureBridge (formerly Yosemite National Institutes) and the National Outdoor Leadership School. Cleveland served as board chair of the Marin Community Foundation (over $2 billion in assets), as a board member of Net Impact, an organization with a global network of more than 15,000 leaders who are changing the world through business, and as a commissioner of the Marin County Parks and Open Space Commission.
Cleveland has earned an MBA and PhD from UC Davis and is a sought-after thought leader and speaker, regularly presenting at dozens of national conferences including Net Impact, the Ahwahnee Conference, the Environmental Forum, and the Agricultural Institute of Marin.
Daniel serves as a Managing Director for Potrero Group, where he leads strategy and board engagements. His Potrero Group clients have included Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy, Minnesota Public Radio, NatureBridge, Outdoor Afro, and The Trail Conservancy, for which he has led strategic planning, new program development, board recruitment and retention and executive search. Notably, Daniel led Potrero Group’s engagement through Resources Legacy Fund to provide program management to the development of California Natural Resource Agency’s 30×30 strategy to conserve thirty percent of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030.
Daniel has been a cultural, environmental, and social sector leader for over fifteen years and brings a unique cross-section of creative and business strategy to his work. He has built expertise on leading through partnership inside and across organizations and sectors. He co-authored Don’t Lead Alone: Think Like a System, Act Like a Network, Lead Like a Movement, published by Fast Company Press in 2023, and covered in Forbes, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and more. His previous leadership positions included serving as Executive Director for Plays & Players Theatre and Administrative Director for International Performing Arts for Youth. Daniel has also served as a theater director of over thirty plays, from which he draws facilitation and innovation skills to bring to his client work.
Daniel co-created a series of courses on Multinational Crosscultural Teams for UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education on Coursera, for which he authored and designed the curriculum. He has also presented at EarthX, the Unite For Sight Global Health & Innovation Conference, Public Lands Alliance Conference, the Land Trust Alliance’s Rally Conference, and was the closing session co-keynote for the California League of Park Association’s Conference & Training.
Daniel received his MBA at U.C. Davis Graduate School of Management (GSM), where he was the recipient of the Newberry Distinguished Fellowship Award for Leadership, the largest privately funded fellowship awarded to two Full-Time MBAs who exhibit long-term CEO potential, as well as the Brad Atwood Scholarship for Social Responsibility.
Andrew is the managing director of Potrero Group. He specializes in program design, leadership strategy, and project management for organizations in transition. Andrew is the founder of two nonprofit educational organizations and a past director with the Orfalea Foundation and senior manager for Outward Bound, On The Edge Productions, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.
As senior program manager with the Institute at the Golden Gate, Andrew was instrumental in the development of Healthy Parks, Healthy People, a groundbreaking program linking parks with underserved, high health-need communities. He also was a leader of Food for the Parks, a program supporting the NPS’ adoption of healthy food standards for concession contracting.
A lifelong advocate for connecting people with the natural world, Andrew conceived and launched Climate in the Parks, a national program to promote science and climate change literacy through public lands. He has led transformative learning processes for organizations and individuals for more than 20 years. Andrew holds a somatic coach certification from Strozzi Institute and a degree in history from Gustavus.
Stephanie Duncan Karp has been a senior leader at Potrero Group since 2013 and specializes in public-private partnerships, organizational transformation, and systems change. As Managing Director, she leads Potrero Group’s consulting and search services.
Stephanie is skilled at aligning diverse interests and partners around an ambitious shared vision. At Potrero Group, she has helped create innovative public-private partnership organizations from the ground up, including Parks California—State Parks’ statutory nonprofit partner—and Friends of Anacostia Park in Washington, DC. She brings unique perspective on partnership and a wealth of context from her studies of the field: on behalf of the National Park Foundation, she led Potrero Group’s organizational and financial analysis of over 200 nonprofit partners to the National Park Service (NPS), “Nonprofit Park Partner Status & Trends,” released in 2016. She led a similar study of California State Park’s nonprofit partners in 2022.
Before joining Potrero Group, Stephanie facilitated the creation of the National Park Service’s Urban Agenda, repositioning NPS as a community partner that collaborates beyond park borders to serve local needs. She directed Healthy Parks, Healthy People programs at the Institute at the Golden Gate, a program of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which leveraged parks and public lands to address societal issues and community needs. In this role she helped catalyze “park prescriptions,” a movement connecting public lands to our healthcare system, and launched the National Park Service’s Healthy Parks Healthy People US initiative nationwide. As proof of concept, she founded Healthy Parks Healthy People: Bay Area, a collective impact initiative of over 40 public lands, public health, academic and corporate partners to increase park use and enjoyment for the health and wellbeing of all San Francisco Bay Area residents. She received her BA from Swarthmore College and MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Jena Kuznik is a Senior Consultant with Potrero Group, where she leads executive search and board recruitment projects. She leads Potrero’s search and hiring processes for thought leaders and non-traditional candidates for executive roles at nonprofits.
In addition to her work with Potrero Group, Jena has managed projects for organizations focused on sustainable agriculture, water resilience, and environmental philanthropy. She specializes in developing collaborative partnerships between diverse actors to create broader impact. Previously, Jena worked in agricultural investment as an operational risk analyst focused on sustainability and safety. Earlier, she gained hands-on experience in land management and ranching while working in New Mexico and Australia.
Jena received her BS in International Agricultural Development from UC Davis and her Masters of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment.
Steph is a Consultant with Potrero Group. Stephane supports Potrero Group project planning and management by conducting high-level research and analysis of client materials. Her background is in analyzing political systems and movements in academia.
Previously, Stephane was the administrative coordinator at the Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School. In addition to supporting the leadership team, she coordinated with the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum and the Fellows and Study Groups Program to support scheduling and meeting planning. Stephane focuses on building relationships, coordinating high-level events, and coordinating partners to ensure effective processes. She also worked as a staff assistant at the Harvard Global Health Institute, supporting operational logistics for research and programmatic teams.
Stephane has supported research, operations, and communications across a variety of Potrero Group projects including National Outdoor Leadership School, Zion Forever, Lincoln Presidential Foundation, and Parks California, among others. She received her BA in International Relations and Community Health from Tufts University.
Grace is a Consultant at Potrero Group. She conducts strategic planning, board development, and financial modeling. Her recent clients include Aquarium of the Pacific, Veggielution Community Farm, Outdoor Afro, and the National Park Service Partnerships Directorate.
Grace served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer and has eight years of experience leading high-performance teams, managing multi-stakeholder programs, and implementing inclusionary and equitable change management initiatives. As a ship driver and department manager, Grace trained and led teams through complex at-sea operations and managed the cross-functional operations of 60 Sailors during two overseas deployments. She served as the Women in Special Operations Forces Program Manager at Naval Special Warfare, where she regularly implemented organization-wide change management policies and developed sustainable training program structures to ensure the equitable integration of female special warfare operators.
Grace’s advocacy for inclusion, first cultivated in her military career, is threaded throughout her experiences as an impact consultant. She has worked as a business consultant for the National Park Service, where she completed a strategic analysis of Tribal Partner co-stewardship practices at Arizona parks and developed an accompanying tactical decision-support playbook to aid park superintendents in deepening co-stewardship efforts. As a voluntary strategy consultant for Start Lighthouse, a non-profit dedicated to narrowing youth literacy gaps by building inclusive educational experiences for children in the Bronx borough, she assisted in developing an accessible financial model and pricing strategy.
Grace received her MBA from UC Berkeley. She has completed the university’s Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business and volunteers as a Leadership Coach for undergraduate students enrolled in a course focused on high-impact teams.
Amy Jiang (she/her/hers) is an Associate Consultant with Potrero Group. She previously worked at UCSF Cancer Center as a surgery coordinator, where she delivered exceptional care by navigating patients through complex procedures. Additionally, she has served as a mental health case manager at a community-based clinic, working to improve the quality of life of AAPI older adults. Through her extensive experience in healthcare, she developed a passion for advocating for underserved communities. She hopes to use this lens to contribute to a more sustainable and just future.
She received her BS in Psychology at UC Davis and her MBA in Sustainable Solutions at Presidio Graduate School, where she leads the Net Impact Club as Chapter President. Amy placed as a graduate finalist in the 2022 Intentional Endowment Network’s Corporate Engagement Competition, which fueled her interest in ESG investing and allocating resources toward public good. She is bilingual and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. Outside of her professional and academic life, Amy enjoys long-distance running and hiking.
Focused on guiding meaningful conversations rather than delivering long presentations.
Experienced professionals actively working across nonprofits, philanthropy, public service, and mission-driven organizations.
Committed to learning with participants—not simply speaking to them.
Helping participants create lasting relationships beyond the retreat itself.
One of the retreat's guiding principles is that the most valuable learning comes through shared experience. Our facilitators create space for every participant to contribute, challenge assumptions, exchange ideas, and learn from one another in an environment built on trust, curiosity, and collaboration.
Connect with experienced facilitators and a diverse community of leaders working together to strengthen the future of the social sector.
