Leading Through Crisis:
Forest Service Wildfire Crisis
Strategy Partnership Team
Award-Winning Climate Resilience Leadership
During an unprecedented and critical period of nationwide wildfire management, BlueTerra Partners' founder led the Wildfire Crisis Strategy Partnership Team while serving as Acting Senior Advisor in the U.S. Forest Service's National Partnership Office. By supporting coordinated portfolio management and strategic alignment, this team helped facilitate the deployment of nearly $500 million in partnership resources via keystone agreements—working with partners and field units to match funding and capabilities with needs in high-risk firesheds—with the aim of reducing wildfire risk to communities, infrastructure, and natural resources.
The Challenge
The United States faced an escalating wildfire crisis that threatened millions of Americans, critical infrastructure, and natural resources on an unprecedented scale. The Biden Administration's historic multi-billion dollar investment through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act created an unprecedented opportunity—but also an unprecedented coordination challenge.
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The Forest Service had established seven new keystone agreements with national-level partner organizations with funding available for critical agency needs. To be effective, these agreements required coordinated management, consistent messaging, and strategic alignment. Organizations across sectors encounter similar challenges when managing diverse funding sources toward unified goals.
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Many Forest Service field units in high-risk landscapes lacked clear pathways to access these resources and match projects with appropriate partners. This challenge mirrors what organizations face when implementing complex strategies across decentralized operations.
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Forest Service executives needed consistent communication with partner organization leadership while field units required practical guidance on accessing resources. Similar coordination gaps challenge organizations managing initiatives across multiple organizational levels.
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Without centralized coordination, the historic funding opportunity risked being underutilized or deployed inefficiently across the 21 priority landscapes and other high-risk firesheds—areas spanning approximately 80 million acres of national forests and grasslands. High-risk firesheds needed immediate access to partnership resources. However, the complexity of matching specific project needs with appropriate keystone agreements, partner capabilities, and funding streams had the potential to create operational bottlenecks that would delay critical wildfire risk reduction.
The Solution
Recognizing that the new, large-scale keystone agreements required coordinated portfolio management to achieve their full potential, the Wildfire Crisis Strategy Partnership Team was launched and guided as among the first efforts to manage national partnership agreements more holistically—so that they could work together more effectively across landscapes.
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A five-member core team was assembled and supervised while leading broader cross-agency coordination efforts. The team established a comprehensive, nationwide approach for managing multiple large-scale agreements as an integrated portfolio, creating consistent messaging that identified each partner's unique interests and capabilities while demonstrating their ability to have a large collective impact on wildfire risk reduction. This portfolio approach enabled strategic resource allocation while allowing high-risk firesheds to team up with the partner that could best address their needs.
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With the support of many Forest Service units and partners, the team helped design outreach efforts and matching systems to link project needs with funding streams. These systems allocated tens of millions in partnership funding across diverse landscapes—while maintaining a focus on consistency, fairness, and equity.
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The team coordinated extensively across three critical levels simultaneously: executive coordination with keystone partner organizations, strategic communication with Forest Service leadership, and operational support for field units implementing projects. This approach balanced competing interests and priorities while keeping all stakeholders focused on measurable wildfire risk reduction outcomes during intense political and operational pressures, integrating strategic management with operational support to enable rapid resource deployment.
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The team worked to communicate partnership opportunities across the Forest Service, tailoring messages for different audiences—from senior leadership to field project managers—while maintaining consistent messaging about partner capabilities, application processes, and strategic priorities.
Team’s Results & Impact (through September 2024)
Seven large-scale, national keystone agreements managed as an integrated portfolio, creating coordinated approach to partnership resource deployment across the largest wildfire risk reduction investment in U.S. history.
Multi-level stakeholder coordination achieved across keystone partner organization executives, Forest Service leadership, and field implementation units, maintaining strategic alignment during unprecedented resource deployment.
Consistent messaging framework established that promoted partnership opportunities across the decentralized Forest Service organization, provided clarity around each partner's unique capabilities, and successfully connected Forest Service field units and high-risk firesheds with tens of millions of dollars.
2024 Chief's Honor Award recognition for innovative partnership portfolio management and crisis coordination leadership, representing the highest level of agency recognition for exceptional performance during the wildfire crisis response.
Agencywide Results Achieved (through September 2024)
21 priority landscapes and other high-risk firesheds activated spanning approximately 80 million acres across the Western states, with keystone agreement resources strategically deployed throughout.
803,633 acres treated in fiscal year 2024 across Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes and record-breaking 4.28 million acres of hazardous fuels treatments nationwide.
Measurable community protection delivered including 7.8% average reduction in wildfire risk to residential housing, 8.2% reduction in risk to critical infrastructure, 11.8% reduction in wildfire risk to critical watersheds, and $37 million in avoided residential property losses in 2023.
Why It Matters
This case shows that with shared leadership, agreed processes, and close collaboration, a network of agreements and funding streams—even when very complex—can successfully support outcomes that matter to people and communities. The Wildfire Crisis Strategy Partnership Team represents one example of how such approaches can help investments achieve real results under difficult conditions.
Key principles behind this approach now define BlueTerra Partners’ methodology for complex partnership coordination:
Manage multiple agreements as a connected portfolio to maximize collective impact and efficiency
Build systems that connect urgent needs with the right funding and partner capabilities, quickly and transparently
Align stakeholders from executives to implementers, maintaining clarity and focus even under pressure
Use tailored messaging and outreach to ensure every corner of a decentralized organization is engaged
Continuously balance competing interests while focusing on real, measurable outcomes
Ultimately, this partnership portfolio model proved that with unified coordination and consistent strategy, organizations can deliver exceptional results even amid uncertainty and crisis—offering a blueprint for others facing similar challenges.
Let’s work together to optimize your partnership portfolio.
At BlueTerra Partners, we draw on what we’ve learned through this work—coordinating across stakeholders, aligning partners, and connecting funds to needs—to support organizations seeking to deliver resilient, measurable results together.