Bruce Stedman has over forty years’ experience working with nonprofits as an executive director, fundraiser, and organizational mediator/facilitator. His primary areas of experience are climate resilience, ecological planning, marine resources, nuclear weapons abolition, and sustainable food. He has expertise in organizational, financial, and project management, fundraising, strategic planning, facilitation, mediation, training and teaching, public engagement, environmental impact assessment, and natural resources policy development.
In 2016, Bruce stepped in as interim co-director at the Conway School to help stabilize it during an especially troubled time. He helped build trust and foster collaborative engagement among Conway’s staff, faculty, students, and trustees. In 2020, he ensured that the school (a one-year graduate program in ecological design and planning) would survive — and even thrive — during the pandemic through his work to acquire CARES Act funding and address related higher education regulatory challenges. Bruce left the organization in 2023 after a successful $1.5M capital campaign, purchasing a new campus, four years of positive financial balances, and retiring the mortgage. He also guided steady progress toward Conway’s DEI objectives, numerous compliance tasks, and effective navigation of the pandemic.
Bruce has engaged with community groups, NGOs, private companies, Native American governments, and public agencies (local, regional, national, and international). He has planned and facilitated or mediated more than thirty policy and organizational discussions and disputes. He has also conducted more than fifty-five workshops and study tours for public officials from over forty countries, including Brazil, Egypt, Estonia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Moldova, Russia, Spain, and Uruguay.
- As a Senior Mediator at RESOLVE, Inc. (2000–2007), Bruce mediated and/or facilitated many contentious policy disputes, strategic planning processes, and public participation efforts. Among other assignments, he
Oversaw and disbursed the $1.25M Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund, a litigation settlement concerning the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons production complex; - Directed the Governor’s Task Force on the Planning and Development of Marine Aquaculture in Maine;
- Led an international team to research and co-author the World Commission on Dams’ thematic review on “Participation, Negotiation, and Conflict Management around Large Dams”;
- Co-managed the New York Governor’s State Oceans and Great Lakes Symposium; and
- Co-facilitated a strategic planning process for the National Institutes of Health AIDS Therapeutics Research Program.
Bruce holds a Master in City Planning from MIT and a Master of Arts in Landscape Design from the Conway School. He has directed six NGOs and small businesses, and taught at Conway, Harvard, Tufts, and Western Washington State University.
In his work as a Conservation Commissioner in Amherst, Massachusetts, the New England representative of Mayors for Peace U.S., and a board member of two other non-profits, Bruce is now focused on building climate resilience, abolishing nuclear weapons, and supporting the NGO sector.
Bruce and his wife tend their box tortoise and Red House Farmlet in western Massachusetts. They have three grown children and a granddaughter.
LinkedIn: Bruce Stedman