Staff Bio

Steph Kavanaugh joined the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation (Udall Foundation) as a Senior Program Manager in 2015. Today, she is the Director of the John S. McCain III National Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution and manages its programs, projects, and staff.

Prior to joining the Udall Foundation, Steph worked as an internal facilitator, mediator, and trainer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where she designed and facilitated dozens of conflict resolution processes on sensitive topics, including marine energy, protected management, coral reef conservation, and Natural Resource Damage Assessment. She began her Federal career as an ORISE fellow at the EPA Office of Water.

Steph has trained hundreds of Federal agency staff and contractors in group facilitation, conflict resolution, and collaboration. In addition to conflict prevention and management, her subject matter expertise includes terrestrial and marine protected area management, multiuse area management, wetlands compensatory mitigation, coral reef ecology, and plane ecology. Steph earned her Master of Science in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology from the University of Maryland in College Park and her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Biology from Eastern Illinois University. In her free time, Steph enjoys trail running, hiking, camping, sewing, crocheting, being a “bird nerd,” and spending time with her husband, Chris, and calico cat, Lily.