About Fire Safe Sonoma

Linda L. Collister, Secretary

Linda is a retired Fire Marshal/Division Chief and CUPA Program Manager with over 20 years of experience. She has an extensive background as a Hazmat Specialist responding to emergency incidents throughout Sonoma County. As a Chief Officer in northern Sonoma County, she has responded to many incidents including the large and devastating wildfires affecting the City of Healdsburg and surrounding communities. Linda has written and been awarded grants for fuels reduction projects in the Open Space surrounding the City of Healdsburg and helped initiate the first CalVTP awarded to a municipal fire department in California. She has worked with the Communities Organized to Prepare for Emergencies (COPE) and Fire Wise Communities groups on community risk reduction projects.  After her retirement from the City of Healdsburg in May 2022, she was hired as a full-time Fire Technology Tenure Instructor for the Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC). She has been an Associate Instructor in the Fire Technology program since 2005 and an instructor with the Fire Academy. 

Ken Hite, Treasurer

Ken is our Treasurer and has been a member of the Board for 6 years.  Prior to moving to Sonoma County, Ken lived in Seattle for 15 years where he was President of a non-profit that supported State Parks and raised over $2M to fund a park endowment.  In his professional life, Ken was a Senior Executive with several large corporations focused on Information Technology, Contracts Management, and Finance. He brings those skills to the business operations side of FSS. 

Ariel Kelley, Board Chair

Ariel is the current Mayor for the City of Healdsburg. She was elected to the Healdsburg City Council in 2020. She is the former Chief Executive Officer of local non-profit Corazón Healdsburg, which she co-founded in 2016. Under her leadership, Corazón was awarded non-profit of the year in the California State Assembly.

An attorney by training, Ariel has worked in land use, acquisitions, business development and tax law in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and has worked in government relations for major sporting events in the Bay Area. She holds a Juris Doctorate and Master’s in Business Administration from Golden Gate University and B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Oregon.

Ariel lives in Healdsburg with her husband, their two kids, a dog and five chickens.

Vern Losh

Vern has spent most of his adult life in the fire service. He served as a firefighter for South Placer County Fire Protection District as well as the Sonoma County Fire Chief.  More recently, Vern has served as the California State Firefighters Association’s Grant Committee Chair. Vern is currently an independent fire safety consultant developing solutions for the development of land and facilities as it relates to fire and building codes. This work includes the application of common sense solutions to the ever-changing risks of wildland-urban interface fires. In his spare time, when he isn’t volunteering for Fire Safe Sonoma, Vern enjoys spending time with his beautiful grandchildren.

Paul Lowenthal

Paul is the Division Chief Fire Marshal for the City of Santa Rosa. Paul started his professional career in the fire service in 1998 and has worked for Santa Rosa Fire since 2001. Paul has experience in operations and prevention, promoted to Division Chief Fire Marshal in 2021 and developed the City’s Vegetation Management Program and Community Wildfire Protection Plan.  Paul has also been a Board Member for Fire Safe Sonoma since 2016. Paul led both short and long term recovery efforts for Santa Rosa following the Tubbs, Nuns and Glass Fires and has worked with communities across the western United States and in Maui on with lessons learned, mitigation strategies and wildfire disaster recovery.

Roberta MacIntyre, Past President

Roberta has served over 35 years in the fire service. She started out as a volunteer firefighter, became a career firefighter for a metropolitan fire department working in fire suppression, and eventually discovered how much more she could do in fire prevention. After several years working in fire prevention, Roberta eventually became the Assistant Chief/Fire Marshal for the County of Sonoma.

Now in “retirement” Roberta takes pride in bringing her well-honed fire service experience, executive management skills, and oral, and interpersonal communication skills volunteering as President and CEO of Sonoma County’s premiere fire safe council, Fire Safe Sonoma. Roberta is currently living in the Northern San Francisco Bay Area where you can often find her a few miles from home hiking with her dog “Buddy” in beautiful Northern California.

Steve Mosiurchak

Steve was born and raised in Sonoma County. Steve has served in the fire service since 1997 and his service includes time as a firefighter. He has been with the County of Sonoma since 2002, where he currently serves as the Sonoma County Fire Warden. He is a certified Fire Marshal and Chief Officer with The State Fire Marshal’s office. He is a Certified Fire Inspector 2 with NFPA and holds a BS Degree in Fire Science and OSHA Law. In his spare time, Steve enjoys working with his father installing fire sprinkler systems.

Geoff Peters

Geoff is a fundraiser, lawyer, entrepreneur, manager, commercial flight instructor, SCUBA diver, emergency services trainer and volunteer, and olive farmer. Geoff has served as COO or CEO or on boards of directors and in numerous other roles with many nonprofit and for-profit enterprises.  He has started business and nonprofit enterprises, argued cases in the Supreme Court and taught people how, effectively, to assist first responders in disasters. He recently retired as Board Chair of the largest fundraising group in the world with 5,000 employees. Geoff started the Asti-Cloverdale COPE after meeting other COPE leaders and Fire Chief Turbeville. His involvement with COPE led him to inquire about training and learning about CERT (Community Emergency Response Team).  COPE focuses on preparedness before an event, while CERT focuses its preparedness on volunteer training on what to do during an event.  Since there were no CERT organizations active in Sonoma County, he took additional training to be a CERT Trainer and Program Manager and founded Northern Sonoma County CERT under the auspices of the Cloverdale and the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection Districts.

Sashi Sabaratnam, Vice Chair

Sashi is currently the Wildfire & Climate Resiliency Chief for the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and is a former mayor of the City of Mill Valley and founding member of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority. She has consulted for the insurance industry and Department of Defense on wildfire resilience, including community engagement and use of data and autonomous systems and also worked as the UC Cooperative Extension Wildfire Vegetation Mitigation Program Manager for the County of Sonoma. She has a Master of Arts in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, conducting original qualitative research with Sonoma County landowners to uncover the characteristics of effective visualization tools to catalyze community consensus around wildfire vegetation management and holds a Certificate in Business Analysis from the University of California-Berkeley.

Marshall Turbeville

Marshall is the Fire Chief of the Northern Sonoma County Fire District and a CAL FIRE Battalion Chief. Marshall has been involved in individual and community level wildfire risk reduction projects ranging from Firewise USA recognition to prescribed burning.  His expertise is sharing information to residents, properties, and communities from his 25 years of firefighter experiences including responding to Sonoma County’s recent destructive wildfires  Marshall is also on the Board of COPE Northern Sonoma County, Friends of Lake Sonoma, and Pole Mountain Lookout Association.  He also teaches at the Santa Rosa Junior College Fire Technology and Natural Resource Management programs.

Ben Nicholls, Executive Director

Ben has over 30 years of experience with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection – CAL FIRE. He has worked in a variety of programs and specialties throughout his career including Wildland and Municipal Fire Protection, Emergency Command Center Operations, Fire Prevention/Law Enforcement, and Pre-Fire treatment. Since 2017, he has been a part of all major wildland firefighting operations in Sonoma County and most recently served as a Division Chief with CALFire in Sonoma County. Now retired from the Fire Service, Ben brings collaborative leadership skills, deep operational local knowledge, and commitment to community risk reduction to the Fire Safe Sonoma team.

Marika Ramsden, Firewise Outreach Coordinator

Marika was born in Santa Cruz but grew up in the United Kingdom. After graduating from the Scottish University of Saint Andrews with a master’s degree with honors in Sustainable Development, she cycled the UK, followed by the coast of California leading workshops on sustainability for youth. In 2013, she settled in Sonoma County where she developed the youth program for the international One Planet Living movement and worked with Credo High School to help them become the first One Planet School in the world. Marika is well connected in the Sonoma County non-profit world, having organized multiple county youth summits, and worked alongside them to coordinate projects, presentations, and workshops. One of Marika’s primary goals is to find ways to help communities become more resilient and that is exactly how she fits in with Fire Safe Sonoma. In April of 2022, Marika jumped right into the role of Executive Coordinator, bringing her knowledge, skills, and abilities to continue the mission of Fire Safe Sonoma; to increase awareness of wildfire issues in our county and help residents and firefighting agencies to achieve improved wildfire preparedness. Marika shares her Santa Rosa home with her husband, Stephen and their active 2-year-old daughter.

Sophia Leveque, County Coordinator

As a lifelong resident of Sonoma County, Sophie has been lucky enough to spend countless hours exploring the natural landscape of this beautiful place. She grew up in the hills outside of Healdsburg where she could most often be found reading a book outside under a tree or playing in the creek that ran through her backyard. She attended Sonoma State University and holds a degree in Environmental Studies with a focus in Conservation and Restoration. After college, she worked extensively in the world of local agriculture: working on and managing farms and ranches across Sonoma and Marin counties. She enjoys exploring the intersection of agriculture and conservation work, which she got to explore in great depth at her recent role at Point Blue Conservation Science. At Point Blue she worked closely with ranchers and landowners to implement conservation practices on their land. She is excited to be joining the wonderful team at Fire Safe Sonoma and looks forward to working to make our county a safer place to call home. When she is not working she can be found out in her garden, bird watching with her grandfather or spending time hiking in the woods around Occidental with her partner.

Jennie Hernandez, California Climate Action Corps Fellow

Jennie holds a B.A. in Individualized Studies from Cal Poly Humboldt, with a focus on Environmental Conservation, Activism, Sustainability, and Natural Resources, as well as a minor in Rangeland Resource Science. Her diverse background includes serving as a wildland firefighter and dispatcher trainee with the U.S. Forest Service (Crew 52, Six Rivers National Forest), conducting vegetation maintenance with the City of Arcata, working as a Park Ranger Assistant at Lake Piru, and supporting ecological research through roles with the DAWN Project and the Rangeland Ecology Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Claire Burrow, California Climate Action Corps Fellow

Claire studied at Louisiana State University majoring in Coastal Environmental Science and minoring in Communication Studies. She focused on education and outreach in environmentalism and science communication, including being a mentor for LSU Environmentors, the President of the College of the Coast Community Council, and a member of Coastal Environmental Science Advocates. Claire had a focus on studying disaster impacts and policy, specifically with floods and hurricanes, and is excited to apply that knowledge to wildfire resiliency and learning from Fire Safe Sonoma.

Sydney Moraca, California Climate Action Corps Fellow

Sydney recently graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs with a B.A. in Physics and a concentration in Environmental Studies. An avid mountaineer, skier, and yogi, Sydney is excited to immerse herself in California’s diverse ecosystems, learning how different environments adapt to a changing climate. She is looking forward to applying her knowledge to help wildfire mitigation efforts and community outreach. Off the clock, you can find her reading, trying a new recipe, or soaking up the California sun.