WiRē Center Staff
Colleen Donovan
Project Manager, WiRē Center
Colleen provides expertise and support to wildfire practitioners, community organizations, and local leaders living and working in the wildland urban interface to implement the WiRē approach. She is the day-to-day point of contact for WiRē practitioner partners. Colleen has over 13 years of experience applying social science research in a variety of applications and providing strategic project management support for local, state, federal, and tribal natural resource agencies. Colleen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and Environmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
Josh Kuehn
Wildfire Mitigation Specialist, WiRē Center
Josh is passionate about the interplay between social context, perceptions of wildfire risk, and ecologically minded natural resource management. Josh believes that we can live with wildfire and gets excited about fostering approaches to steward fire adapted communities. He has experience designing and implementing forest restoration projects tailored toward wildfire resilience and has worked directly with WUI landowners to develop defensible space and home hardening plans. Additionally, Josh has partnered with local fire protection districts to administer slash removal programs for WUI homeowners and has participated in Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) development. Josh holds BA degrees in Geography and Sustainability from Jacksonville University and an MS in Conservation Leadership from Colorado State University.
Carolyn Wagner
Data Manager, WiRē Center
Carolyn’s primary responsibility is to process and analyze social and wildfire risk data collected by the WiRē Center and communicate the story behind the data with the partner communities. Carolyn has over 14 years of experience with data management and analysis. Her data experience includes the full range of data management functions: conceptualization of data collection and management, design and testing of surveys and data forms, collecting and processing data to meet quality standards, and combining primary and secondary data sources. Carolyn’s expertise includes developing tools to coordinate and manage the data collection process; writing protocols and procedures to document and ensure consistent quality control standards; coordinating large project teams, and conducting statistical analysis using Stata and Excel. In addition to working with WiRē, she works as a natural resource economist for her LLC, CW Research and Consulting, where she provides economic and research support to multiple clients. She holds a BA in Economics from the University of Colorado and an MA from the University of Colorado Denver.
Suzanne Wittenbrink
Program Associate, WiRē Center
Suzanne works with the WiRē Center team to analyze and process data and build products for WiRē’s partners. Her professional goal is to be part of solutions at the public-natural resource interface and WiRē is at the forefront of those solutions. Suzanne holds a degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from Colorado State University with a minor in Global Environmental Sustainability.