WRA Announces Addition of Virginia Mahacek, Senior Geomorphologist
SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Nov. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- WRA, Inc. is pleased to announce the addition of Virginia Mahacek, Senior Geomorphologist. With 27 years of experience, Virginia brings a suite of expertise and skills that align perfectly with WRA's vision and serve WRA's current client base, as well as cultivate new connections.
"I am really excited to have Virginia join our team and lead our stream restoration practice," said Geoff Smick, WRA Chief Executive Officer. "As an experienced fluvial geomorphologist, she brings tremendous value to our stream restoration service line, which has grown significantly over the last five years. Virginia has expertise in forest and community resiliency, a critical aspect of regional and statewide planning across California. As threats from climate change become more evident, we look forward to partnering with communities to plan ahead to reduce the impact of these disasters."
Virginia has an extensive background in natural resource management and restoration, with a focus on solving complex technical and planning issues with diverse stakeholders in varied regulatory settings. She facilitates productive conversations to address natural and human disturbances, river system management, climate change adaptation, and wildfire hazard and risk reduction. At WRA, she will provide leadership and technical expertise on watershed assessments, stream studies, restoration planning, design development, environmental compliance, and construction oversight. Virginia will also champion WRA's efforts to foster community resilience related to drought, flooding and wildfire hazards.
Before joining WRA, Virginia most recently worked with the County of Sonoma's Office of Recovery and Resiliency as the natural resources/watershed coordinator and co-lead for the Local Watershed Task Force, in conjunction with the cities of Santa Rosa and Sonoma. She focused on fire response and recovery measures by public agencies and their non-profit partners, including direct watershed protections, formulating effective disaster mitigation projects and successfully securing federal and state grants to help fund wildfire prevention, fuel reduction, preparedness and forest health initiatives.
"I'm thrilled to be joining WRA at this opportune moment in their growth, related to my core professional practice in river restoration, to lead an established restoration team as we expand the breadth of services and geographic reach," said Virginia. "I'm particularly enthusiastic about the potential for collaborating with WRA's biological, mitigation conservation and environmental planning experts to work collaboratively on opportunities to help address daunting landscape and community scale resiliency and hazard reduction needs with emerging information and tools that support the public and private sectors."
Virginia completed her academic studies at the University of California, Davis, where she earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees in physical geography and in forest hydrology and soils geomorphology, respectively. She has served local, state and federal agencies, special districts, and tribal governments throughout California and the Pacific Northwest.
Please contact Virginia on the WRA website or LinkedIn.
WRA, Inc. provides professional consulting services in plant, wildlife, and wetland ecology, regulatory compliance, mitigation banking, CEQA/NEPA, GIS, and landscape architecture. For more information, visit www.wra-ca.com. For media contact: [email protected]
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Virginia Mahacek
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