Yale Blue Green | ‘Climates Past, Present and Future: An Introduction to the Adaptive Tricks of the Trade of Forest Trees’ featuring Sharon Friedman ’77 MFS

Friedman graduated from what was then the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at a time when there were few women in forest science and management.  After getting a Phd in genetics at the University of New Hampshire,  her career began in the field of genetics, working with the National Forests in south-central Oregon on reforestation efforts that involved seed collection and seed orchards. She would then establish the National Forest Genetics Lab, which still operates today as part of the U.S. Forest Service. Moving to D.C., She became the forest research program director at the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service — now the National Institute of Food and Agriculture — and then served in detail assignments on the staff of Florida Congresswoman Carrie Meek, and with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  She became the Director of Planning in the Rocky Mountain Region, which involved strategic planning, NEPA, appeals, litigation, FOIA, and climate change.

Now retired, Friedman is the founder and managing editor of The Smokey Wire, an online news and opinion blog about topics related to the USFS and public lands policy. In 2022, the School of the Environment named her an outstanding alumna, calling her a “barrier-breaking forest geneticist.”