Ever wondered how you can do more for public lands but you aren’t sure where to start? Outdoor Alliance’s Outdoor Allies series explores how other outdoor adventurers got their start and their advice for how you can harness your passion for the outdoors into protecting the places you love. Hannah Malvin (she/her) is a coach and consultant with 12 years of experience focused on making work more equitable, effective, and enjoyable. She is Program Manager of The Bridge Program at Greening Youth Foundation; the founder of Pride Outside, an organization working with Congress, federal agencies, and conservation nonprofits on LGBTQ inclusion initiatives; and the co-founder of the LGBTQ Outdoor Summit.

Tell us about your relationship with the outdoors and what you like to do outside.

I fell in love with the outdoors leading canoe trips in Canada over college summers in Algonquin, Killarney, and Temagami. It was exciting to help campers discover strength they didn’t know they had, just like I had as a camper. I’ve stayed close with the other trip leaders and, outside of the pandemic, our years have been happily punctuated with canoe trips and winter camping trips. I love the rhythm of the trips with days full of paddling and portaging and nights hanging by the campfire. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing, it’s sublime.

June is Pride Month! Can you tell us about your work with Pride Outside and the LGBTQ Outdoor Summit?

I founded Pride Outside in 2016 to connect the LGBTQ community around the outdoors. It’s been exciting to help raise voices from the LGBTQ community to Congress, federal land management agencies, conservation nonprofits, and the outdoor industry. One of our premiere events is the LGBTQ Outdoor Summit, which I founded with Elyse Rylander of Out There Adventures in 2017. We gather LGBTQ environmental professionals to boost representation and inclusion in the outdoors.

Recently, we were thrilled to be able to gather for the 2022 LGBTQ Outdoor Summit in April at the Fish and Wildlife Service’s gorgeous National Conservation Training Center campus. The theme was joy and connection and it was wonderful to be in community with queer folks across the sector hearing from speakers and enjoying time together bird watching, hiking, cycling, fly fishing, salsa dancing, hanging around the campfire, and with a big scavenger hunt. Another favorite program was our LGBTQ History Nights that Pride Outside launched in partnership with the National Park Service LGBTQ Employee Group back at the beginning of the pandemic. We surveyed community members on how we could support them and found folks were looking for queer community while social distancing. We hosted 30 LGBTQ history nights and learned about a wide range of topics including the LGBTQ collection at the Smithsonian, a queer history of the suffrage movement, homosexuality on the high seas, a history of Latinx LGBTQ spaces in DC, LGBTQ dog mushers in Alaska, archaeologically-excavated household trash from the Prohibition-era underground queer party scene, and hosted an LGBTQ history wikipedia edit-a-thon.

We’re also excited to be hosting a Nature & Nurture series of hikes and wellbeing workshops for the LGBTQ community in DC in partnership with National Park Foundation’s ParkVentures program. I’m certified in applied positive psychology, the scientific study of wellbeing, and it’s a great chance to support physical, mental, and social health in our community. And for Pride Month and National Ocean Month we’re partnering with NOAA’s Office of Marine Sanctuaries to boost LGBTQ representation outdoors through #PrideInTheOcean. Stay up to date with all things Pride Outside in our newsletter, facebook, twitter, instagram.

You’ve had a huge leadership role at The Bridge Program in recent years. What are the goals of that program and what do you hope to see happen over the next few years?

It’s been a pleasure to work with The Bridge Program team at Greening Youth Foundation and Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards to design and build an equitable hiring pathway for the environmental sector focused on people of color and underrepresented communities. Employers offer jobs through our facilitated hiring pathway, and we recruit and pre-screen candidates then provide a top slate for employers. We also provide coaching and training for candidates on cover letters, linked, networking, and virtual interviews, and training for employers on recruitment, retention, and advancement of diverse talent. We’re excited about continuing to match candidates with open roles, shift power towards candidates in the hiring process, and educate employers across the sector to implement equitable hiring solutions.

Throughout this series, we’ve talked a lot about how to start in advocacy work or how to be an effective advocate, but one thing we’ve never addressed is how to build resilient organizations and resilient individuals who can pursue advocacy work, even when it is difficult. Can you tell us about your coaching work and how organizations can build safe, effective, and resilient teams of advocates?

From sports teams to social movements, I have always been fascinated by what it takes for a group of people to work well together to achieve big goals. And while we’re pursuing big goals, how can we live our best lives along the way? After a decade of working in politics and seeing the effects of high stakes and high stress on folks across the field, I’ve found what’s most exciting to me is building workplace culture rooted in equity and staff wellbeing. I wanted to invest in the people doing the work so I got certified in coaching and applied positive psychology, the scientific study of wellbeing.

With employers looking to attract and retain staff, the “future of work” is shifting to focus more on employee needs and job quality. I hope improvements will be spread far and wide with increased wages and benefits, professional development, and freedom from discrimination.

I find Employee Resource Groups to be one of the most exciting laboratories for innovating on workplace culture. I believe we’re just getting started on unlocking the possibilities of ERGs for community building, career development, and culture change. In my consultancy, I work with corporate, nonprofits, and federal agencies on equity, workplace culture, ERG management, staff retreats, and staff wellbeing.

Lightning Round:

Favorite close-to-home spot: Old Rag

Most used piece of gear: I think I’m on my fourth pair of ASOLO Fugitive GTX boots

Something you are reading: Rebel Talent by Francesca Gino and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Outdoor Allies: Hannah Malvin