Michael Kern Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Washington, United States

Michael Kern Consulting, LLC provides strategic advice and guidance to leaders and decision-makers who are designing, conducting, and implementing collaborative policy processes.

Seattle, Washington, United States

The William D. Ruckelshaus Center is a collaborative policy center jointly operated by Washington State University and the University of Washington. The Center provides expertise to improve the quality and availability of voluntary collaborative approaches for policy development and multi-party dispute resolution.

Michael was a Senior Associate at Seattle-based Triangle Associates, which provides facilitation and mediation, public involvement and education to resolve complex and often controversial natural resource management issues. He develop and managed successful facilitation, mediation, public involvement, strategic planning and organizational development projects for the City of Seattle, State of Washington, US Forest Service, National Park Service and other clients.

Michael was Director of a new initiative for The Wilderness Society, developing a shared vision for Washington’s North Cascades region that includes conservation, outdoor recreation and sustainable economic development for communities. This involved working cooperatively with federal, state, local and tribal governments; grassroots and national conservation and recreation groups; timber, agricultural and other business interests; and urban and rural communities in eastern and western Washington.

LLTK is a non-profit whose mission is to restore wild salmon to the Pacific Northwest. Michael provided project management, facilitation, strategic planning and communications/outreach for the Congressionally-funded Puget Sound and Coastal Washington Hatchery Reform Project. This included facilitating the Hatchery Scientific Review Group, a Hatchery Reform Coalition of fishing and conservation stakeholders, Hatchery Reform Technical Discussions, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Steelhead Planning Team, and others. He also facilitated a US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) initiative to apply hatchery reform principles, tools and recommendations to all 21 salmon hatcheries USFWS owns or operates in the Columbia River Basin.

Michael directed a task group at the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental Health. This included facilitation and coordination of the Hanford Openness Workshops, an innovative approach to helping a normally divisive set of stakeholders work together to foster open decision-making at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Nuclear Site. He also facilitated the Tribal Risk Roundtable, where representatives of 23 tribes/tribal nations discussed with state and federal representatives unique tribal risk management concerns in cleanup of the nation’s nuclear sites.

Michael served as Principal of Madrona Resources, a public policy consulting firm whose clients included non-profit organizations, local governments, Indian tribes and community groups.

Michael began his career at the Northwest Renewable Resources Center (a non-profit provider of natural resource mediation and facilitation), working on salmon, timber and water resource issues, and improving relationships between Indian and non-Indian governments on land use and natural resource management.

Mpa, Public Administration

Activities and Societies: Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society, Technology and Policy Information Network (co-founder)

Bfa, Fine Art

Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa