Career Pathways Grants: Building the Next Generation of Park Professionals

EPISODE 11 — Find your path

SPEAKERS

Emily Harwitz (host), Alfonso Orozco (guest), Adriana Barrera (guest), Cecilia Lopez (guest), Javier Sandoval-Garcia (guest)

[INTRO MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 00:00

Hi and welcome to another episode of I’ll Go If You Go! I’m your host, Emily Harwitz. This season has been all about jobs in conservation—some of the roles that are out there, how our guests got into them, and how you can, too. Well in today’s episode, we’re taking a closer look at programs specifically designed to help people get experience working in these kinds of jobs.

First, we’ll meet Alfonso Orozco, an outdoor enthusiast, adventurer, and advocate for equitable access to nature. Guided by his love for the outdoors and his own experiences navigating his career, Alfonso now leads the Career Pathways Grants Program at Parks California which strives to address barriers to access and prepare people for meaningful careers in parks.

So what does this kind of career training look like? Well it’s your lucky day, because later in the episode, we’ll get to hear from one of the organizations that got a Career Pathways grant this year, including for hands-on experience working in the redwoods—stay tuned for more!

[MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 00:55

I’m here with our magnificent guest today, Alfonso Orozco, and by here I mean the Redwood Bowl at Oakland’s Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park.

Alfonso Orozco 01:03

Hi Emily, glad to be here.

Emily Harwitz 01:05

How’s it going? How does it feel to be sitting here outside today?

Alfonso Orozco 01:09

It feels really good. You know, normally I sit in an office, or, I guess at home, in my home office. It’s really nice to be outside and be amongst redwoods and amongst amazing people. So my title is Associate Program Manager. I work for an organization called Parks California, and what Parks California really cares about is ensuring that all of these parks, all California parks, really, not just state parks, are inclusive and welcoming for everyone, and that there are climate resilient spaces that can continue to thrive for us, but also for future generations. And then finally, we keep an eye towards the future,making investments towards things like the Career Pathways program that helps create more pathways into California State Parks.

Emily Harwitz 01:51

Since today’s episode is all about jobs, and the season really is about different ways that you can work outdoors, I’d love to hear more about the Career Pathways Grants program,

Alfonso Orozco 01:59

Yes, yeah, it’s a mouthful. The Career Pathways Grants Program is a program that Parks California started off as a pilot, and the idea is essentially to get more people and more diverse communities into State Parks jobs. We recently encumbered additional funding from California State Parks to expand this and so now we are able to offer implementation grants and planning and development grants for community organizations to either a) hit the ground running with career pathways programs that can be placing interns with California State Parks. Or the planning and development ones is, we know that it requires time and resources to think thoughtfully about how you’re going to do a Career Pathways Program. I want to see state parks that have a strong workforce so that they’re able to provide the services needed to run the state parks at a level that’s going to be good for nature and good for the people that are visiting there.

And in terms of how the Career Pathways program actually works, Parks California doesn’t place interns in state parks but we do look to organizations that are well established, have a good reputation within their own community, and have those really strong connections. And we look to them to tell us what kind of programming their community needs in order to prepare them to work in state parks. And we also want them to connect with local state parks that they can develop the partnership with those state parks.

Emily Harwitz 02:40

What do you mean by programming?

Alfonso Orozco 03:27

Some organizations will be providing natural resources, internship opportunities, right? That’s trail building, that’s maintenance, that could be even doing fire restoration. Other organizations might be looking at doing environmental education and interpretation. Other organizations might be doing something that’s multidisciplinary, where they are getting experiences learning a couple of weeks here with one ranger, a couple of weeks somewhere else with a different ranger, being placed with different agencies. And so we are notdictating what the type of experience needs to be. We are really looking at the organizations to tell us what would be most valuable to their community members and what would be most valuable to the state parks that they’re working with.

Emily Harwitz 04:11

I love that approach. Meet people where they’re at, ask them what they need, and work with communities and organizations that are already established and have that trust. What’s next for the workforce development program?

Alfonso Orozco 04:22

We are in the expansion phase right now, so we are offering an implementation level grant for two years or a planning and development grant for one year. And where we are in the cycle right now is, this summer, we’re going to have about a dozen organizations who are going to start implementing Career Pathways programming with State Parks, which is super exciting. The next stage is, we will be opening up another round of applications in the summer of 2025, so in summer of 2025 we’ll welcome a new cohort of organizations who are going to be implementing Career Pathways in state parks.

Emily Harwitz 04:58

Exciting!

Alfonso Orozco 04:59

Yeah, we want to work with local organizations, you know, who are working with community members. And we want to foster a strong relationship and partnership with their local state park so that these community members can get experience and exposure that these careers exist. Because a lot of times, people don’t even know that these opportunities are even out there. It’s not necessarily funneling these individuals to the State Parks jobs. There are so many other elements that need to connect together, but we at least want to put in place some support in order to create that pathway for if a student or a member wants to walk that pathway to a state park job, they have a very clear path that they can walk, if that makes sense.

Emily Harwitz 05:42

Yeah, it does. So essentially, you’re helping to create more opportunities like the ones young Alfonso went through?

Alfonso Orozco 05:49

Exactly! Yes, and I think that’s what excites me the most about doing this kind of work, is that I am a product of a workforce development program. It was with the National Park Service, but here I am, many years later, helping implement a Career Pathways program for California State Parks in my home state, which is just super exciting, and part of the reason why I love the work that I do.

Emily Harwitz 06:12

Well, your enthusiasm is infectious. I’m really excited for this too. It feels so there’s something so poetic and beautiful, and just like a full circle moment.

Alfonso Orozco 06:19

Yeah!

Emily Harwitz 06:20

Well, thank you so much, Alfonso for joining us on I’ll Go If You Go.

Alfonso Orozco 06:23

Thanks, Emily. This was so much fun. And don’t forget to play in every playground!

[MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 06:29

And now I’m thrilled to introduce Adriana Barrera, Cecilia Lopez and Javier Sandoval-Garcia, former participants and current staff at SAMO Youth of the Santa Monica Mountains Fund. We recorded this segment at Big Basin State Park.

Adriana Barrera 06:47

Hello, good afternoon, everyone who’s listening in. My name is Adriana Barrera. I am the Visual Information Specialist for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Cecilia Lopez 06:57

Hello, my name is Cecilia Lopez and I’m one of the SAMO Youth crew supervisors.

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 07:03

Howdy, everyone. My name is Javier Sandoval-Garcia, and I am also one of the SAMO Youth crew supervisors.

Emily Harwitz 07:09

What is SAMO Youth?

Cecilia Lopez 07:10

SAMO Youth is a positive youth development program. This is a program that is partnered with the National Park Service, and we are also in partnership with the Santa Monica Mountains Fund, who helps make this program possible. So what this program is is taking youth, which we define as 18 to 25 year olds, who are college students or recent graduates, and we want to help them develop in their career by offering real world work experience in terms of conservation, habitat restoration, and really just getting them to know different fields of work, different pathways, because nothing is purely linear. So we really focus a lot on professional development as well as hands-on skills when it comes to working outdoors.

Emily Harwitz 08:01

One of the special things I want to mention about our lovely guests here today is that you’ve all been through the SAMO Youth program.

Adriana Barrera 08:08

I was a SAMO Youth alum. I was a supervisor as well last year, but today I’m here as your VIS, essentially a graphic designer. My experience going into the program—actually why I joined to get into the program was because my boyfriend was in the program first, and after the summer, he got a new car. And I was like, ‘hey, I want a new car, too.’ Lo and behold, I didn’t know that I was going to get bit by this bug of like, the great outdoors.

Emily Harwitz 08:37

Figuratively.

Adriana Barrera 08:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Emily Harwitz 08:40

Well, maybe literally, too.

Adriana Barrera 08:41

Yeah! No, yeah.

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 08:43

For me, I started as a crew member in 2021. So back a few years ago, I was in one of my college classes, and going into my senior year, I didn’t really know what I was going to do afterwards, because I had only two more semesters and graduation, andwhat’s next? Tankfully, the program manager, Antonio Solorio, came and presented to my class. I didn’t realize that in the National Parks there’s different opportunities that one, first a student, and on the second point, someone with not so much experience can also join in. So I did it, I applied, and thankfully, I got in to the crew member in 2021 and it was honestly the best summer I’ve ever had. And they must have liked me enough, and I did such a great job that I got extended on to do restoration work with the National Park Service restoration team in Santa Monica Mountains. And after that, a position opened to be a crew leader. I applied, interviewed, and I’ve been a crew leader ever since. So this will be my third year leading the crew.

Emily Harwitz 09:46

So what was this work that y’all were doing that was so great? What did these summers look like?

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 09:50

Yeah, so to add on a little bit more about what the SAMO Youth program is—just to reiterate, it’s a National Park Service program in partnership with the Santa Monica Mountains fund. And the fundamentals of the program, its framework is: so it’s an eight-week program, and every day our goal is to do something different. So the majority of time we are with our in-house park partners, different branches of the National Park Service, including roads and trails, nursery, native plant restoration, interpretation, and all these different branches of the National Park Service. Our goal is to do something new every day. So Mondays could either be interpretation. Tuesdays we like to call Trail Tuesdays. Wednesdays are nursery days, Thursdays Restoration Thursdays.

And as part of the framework of the program,one out of the eight weeks we take the students out for a work camp trip. So for example, last summer, we took students up to Portola Redwoods State Park. And what’s included in this work camp trip is, we introduced these students to a different environment, and the whole week of the work camp trip, we did different work tasks to help out our State Parks partners. We did some trail work, which the students were very familiar with down in SAMO but in a different environment here at the redwoods. We did more professional development with our State Parks staff, and thankfully, we were able to partner up with Save the Redwoods League, and we also had an opportunity to do professional development with them.

Cecilia Lopez 11:24

Something that we really focused on last summer in our work camp trip was the focus of service. Of course, in the Santa Monica Mountains, a lot of our trail work restoring the native habitats is for the habitat itself, but we really got to see and kind of get intimate with the campgrounds here, really getting to see the relationship people have with the park, but also with the redwoods themselves. People come from all over the world to see these huge trees, old growth trees, and so we don’t preserve these things or work in the environment just for the sake of the plants, the wildlife, being OK, but we want to bring more people in. And I think the experience really emphasized that for us, and we really took that back with us to the Santa Monica Mountains—and so much so that we got to come back this year where we are now, and on this work camp trip, we are currently camping in [Big] Basin. And [Big] Basin State Park went through a big fire in 2020 and so part of our work with Big Basin is learning about that unique environment. First of all, because as much as it hurt the state park to receive that fire, for it to happen, it created a really unique ecosystem for the plants and animals there.

So we learned about it, we got to continue trail work there, in terms of restoring some of the old trails that are there, in hopes of having more and more visitors in the future, and also removing some invasive plants. And so a lot of our work with trails or native habitat restoration is looking towards the future and paying it forward for future visitors and just future generations that want to recreate in the environment.

Emily Harwitz 13:15

I want to hear more about this professional development part of what SAMO Youth does.

Adriana Barrera 13:19

Yeah, absolutely. One of the cool things is that we get to open up topartnerships. So for example, some partners that we’ve worked with in past years are the Natural History Museum, recently Save the Redwoods League, LA Compost, the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, or La Plaza de Culturas y Artes, and so many more. And really we make these professional development field trip days so that the youth can get exposed to other positions out there, not just park rangers, but you could be an ornithologist, a museum guide, an educator.

Emily Harwitz 14:07

So you work with organizations across the state of California?

Adriana Barrera 14:08

Typically, we stick with like Ventura County or Los Angeles County. Basically, we try to stay as local as possible because these youth are coming from all over, all across LA, all across Ventura County.

Emily Harwitz 14:23

So it’s pretty special then that you guys came up to Portola, up to the redwoods, right?

Adriana Barrera 14:27

Exactly. The way I like to describe it is, like, okay, it’s like, if you envision a video game, you start off with a map, right? We start at SAMO, that’s like your beginning. But then you venture out into the woodlands or the chaparral, and now you’re at the coast, and your map gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s what we’re trying to inspire. Like, go out there, go out to these outdoor places. They’re yours to enjoy, and bring your friends and family with you. I recently got into video games. That’s why I used that analogy.

Emily Harwitz 15:05

How did going through the SAMO Youth program change you, first on a personal level, and then second, when envisioning your future and what you think about your career and maybe next steps?

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 15:16

So for me, Santa Monica Mountains, the whole mountain range is only 45 minutes for my home base, and I never knew that. I spent 15 plus years in my hometown not even knowing that a quick 45 minute drive there’s a national park there. And then to add on to that, being able to work in a national park and have these different experiences with my peers, make all these different connections, and basically just learn in the field, hands-on, it really opened my eyes to all these different career opportunities that I had never been exposed to before. And it’s just really cool now as a crew supervisor, being able to bring these students down—these students from LA Compton, Camarillo, Fillmore—and have them experience those same joys and beauties and new experiences that I also felt. So it’s been really great seeing all these students in awe, for example, on the drive up here to Portola or to Big Basin. It’s really great seeing the youth’s faces when you see these huge trees, as Adriana mentioned. They’re looking up trying to see the tippity top of the tree and it’s just been great seeing students experience these different things for the first time.

Emily Harwitz 16:27

So having gone through the SAMO Youth program and now as crew leaders, are there things that you experienced and learned while in the program that you now apply to other areas of your life?

Cecilia Lopez 16:37

I would say so, for sure. I think in the program—I went through it as recently as last year—I learned a lot of physical skills, using tools, learning how to properly take care of native plants, even just interpreting because I think a lot of us think of sharing knowledge is only like facts, facts, facts, versus making it accessible to different audiences. And so those kinds of skills help me in my personal life, because the program is only eight weeks and so the truth is, after the program, finding a different line of work can sometimes be—well, it’s necessary. And so I actually was able to take those interpretive skills and put it to work at the Museum of Ventura County, where I got to interpret the knowledge and history that the Chumash had trusted the museum to share with younger audiences. And I think in my personal life, I still use a lot of those interpretive skills, because what is knowledge on its own?

Adriana Barrera 17:43

Yeah, I’ll add to that too. The program totally gave me confidence. Not only did I start feeling a little more comfortable in the outdoors, right? We spend a lot of time together as a crew. We team build and a lot those team building activities I actually brought back home to my family. Sometimes, we fight with our siblings or our family, and I’ve used some of those team building activities with them, and you’re surprised that sometimes you are working with your family, and sometimes, yeah, we can improve in our communication, in our team work, and so that’s something that I’ve brought back home.

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 18:23

For me, definitely being able to advocate for myself, because it’s so great having these different mentors and people you could look up to, and your colleagues as well. But at the end of the day, we should really be vouching for ourselves. And I think I felt really empowered after that first summer that, yeah, after going back to class, I was able to speak up for myself. This is what I need. This is what I don’t need. And not only that, similarly with Adriana and Cecilia, my confidence level—I did see myself in the first week or two when I started the program, I was a little more shy and timid, but this program, it creates such a safe and welcoming space. I was able to bond my peers and really connect with them.

Emily Harwitz 19:06

Why are programs like this important for the future of conservation and our shared public lands?

Cecilia Lopez 19:13

I think in terms of conservation, programs like these are so important because the science behind conservation is always changing. In my time being in this position—this summer, last summer—I’ve heard a lot of people kind of humbly admit that the practices they were using before are not as sustainable as the practices they’re using now. So if conservation can change science-wise, it can also change people-wise. You can’t have conservation without people, so we want to include as many quote, unquote, like faces as we can—different people, different backgrounds—so they can bring in things we haven’t thought about before. Programs like this, not just SAMO Youth, but any program where people are at the forefront of conservation, their backgrounds are valuable. It’s really important.

Adriana Barrera 20:05

Yeah, and I can share that being a part of this program many years ago and still to this day, I’m really grateful for the opportunity to be here at Portola Redwood State Park. I know the power of these programs because I’ve lived through it. It’s a transformative program. It changed my life. Truthfully. And I know that the little Javis, the little Cecilias, the little Adrianas out there, they deserve to be right here, where we are right now. And if it wasn’t for me going through this experience, for us going through this, for this program, I wouldn’t know how to say, like, hey, come with me. Like, let’s go. I’ll go if you go, right? It’s so important to learn to share space in nature. It’s so important to learn through nature, from nature.

Emily Harwitz 20:37

Well thank you so much for joining us and sharing your stories on IGIYG!

Cecilia Lopez 21:10

Thank you for having us.

Adriana Barrera 21:11

Yes. And saludos a mi mama y mi papa. Y mi familia de Nicaragua. Y de Mexico!

Javier Sandoval-Garcia 21:19

Thank you. See y’all later.

Cecilia Lopez 21:20

Thank you.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 21:24

Thanks for joining us on I’ll Go If You Go, a Save the Redwoods League podcast. This season is produced by Leslie Parra and hosted, edited, and sound engineered by Emily Harwitz. Thank you to Adam Kaplan for tech support, and Caleb Castle, Marcos Castineiras, and Mary McPheely for graphic design and media support. Theme song and music by Nhu Nguyen and Anni Feng. You can find seasons one, two, and three wherever you listen to podcasts or on savetheredwoods.org where you can also find transcripts of each episode.

If you like our show, please rate and review. It helps more people find us and join in the conversation. For behind-the-scenes and bonus content, follow us on Instagram @IllGoIfYouGoPod. If you have comments or questions, you can email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you and maybe even share your comments on the podcast. That’s all folks. Catch you next time!