Q&A

| Q&A Kara Woodruff Blakeslee

During her time with the American Land Conservancy, she played a key role in the Hearst Ranch Conservation Project, which prevents any future development on all of the 82,000 acres surrounding Hearst Castle. In 2005, after years of work on the project, she became vice president of the financial planning firm, Blakeslee & Blakeslee, at a time when her husband’s political career was starting to take off. Today, she strives for balance in a hectic life that includes a full-time career, raising two daughters, and volunteer fundraising for the Wild Cherry Canyon project. We stopped by one morning to see how things were going…

Thanks for meeting with us today, Kara. By the way, that’s a great photo there behind your desk.

That picture is taken at San Simeon Point. After the Hearst Ranch project was successfully completed, Sunset Magazine did an article and they needed a tour around the property, so I brought my daughter who is now a junior at SLO High School. We toured around the property and we were standing there and he took our picture, I did not know he was taking it. And then we walked away and he took it again without us, and that picture without us ran in the magazine. But then after the fact, the photographer, sent it to me to say, “Thanks for the day.” It’s a very important picture to me because my daughter is there and we’re out at San Simeon Point looking over to Hearst Ranch. I love it. It has a lot of personal significance. My older daughter really lived through Hearst Ranch and my younger daughter, who is in fourth grade now, has lived through Wild Cherry Canyon. I kind of define projects by which daughter had to go through all of the public hearings. [laughter]

Why conservation?

I grew up in San Diego. From the time I remember my earliest days to the time I left high school, I saw such an enormous change right there in my backyard. The open fields where I used to play literally are now high-rises. When I came to Cal Poly I was so impressed by the fact that when you drove out to Morro Bay at night, it was all dark. And I loved that feeling of darkness at night when it wasn’t flooded by artificial light. And, I think when I started contemplating what my career would be, a good part of the reason I went to law school was that I wanted to prevent unbridled, unplanned development from occurring in places that I love.

So, what did you do?

Prior to working at the Nature Conservancy, I was in a 35-story office building in the financial district of San Francisco practicing corporate law in the environmental land use field. A year later I found myself working in downtown Guadalupe, on the GuadalupeNipomo Dunes, in a little, tiny shoebox office and I could not have been happier. And, my salary went down significantly, too. [laughter] But, I loved it, every minute of it. It was quite a change and exactly the change I was looking for. I’ve never been a big city gal. And, so working in Guadalupe, being surrounded by wonderful people, spending a lot of time out on the dunes which are just so beautiful and peaceful and calm, I love them. There are some incredible botanical resources and wildlife there, too.

Can you give us some background on Wild Cherry Canyon?

I started working on the project in 1999 and it has been a series of successes and obstacles along the way. At this point we are very close to completing the project, and yet getting it past that last hurdle has been very challenging. It’s a $21 million deal and if we are successful we will protect 4,000 acres which would be added to Montana de Oro. And, one of the truly wonderful aspects of this project is that it completes the connection between Avila Beach and Montana de Oro. So, if we acquire the property it will go to the State, and you will be able to wake up in the morning, maybe have breakfast in Avila, walk twenty-some miles, camp if you want to, but you could continue on and have dinner in Morro Bay; and not see any cars along the way. It would be fabulous.

These conservation projects must really benefit by the fact that you are married to a state senator.

There have been times when Sam’s position as an elected official has actually worked against the project. And, the most glaring example was when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor. We had the project very much put together as a package and it was set to go before the Public Works Board, which would have been the final approval. But, right on the eve of the scheduling of that agenda item, the governor killed the project. And, we were told very directly by people who talked to the governor’s staff that the reason was that the governor was dissatisfied with Sam’s vote on the budget. So, as a way of punishing Sam, he took it out on the project, although those two things were only connected by the fact that Sam and I are married. So, it felt extremely frustrating, to say the least.

These projects go on for years and years. How do you keep pushing forward?

There’s an old Calvin Coolidge quote about persistence that I keep on my computer. It’s a pretty long one, but I will go ahead and read it to you. I just love it. It is probably his most famous quote. Here goes… “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Like many others, I have certainly faced a number of personal and professional challenges, but what can you do? You get up, it’s a new day and press on! [laughter]