BHA's 2020 marquee storytelling event will feature storytellers from across North America. Check back often in the coming months as we will update our list regularly. More coming soon. 

Robin Brown

Robin Brown spent eight years as an attack helicopter pilot in the US Army, deploying twice to Iraq. Thirteen years after leaving the service, Robin returned to Iraq to climb and ski Iraq’s tallest mountain as part of a veteran’s project called Adventure Not War which rediscovers conflicted countries as tourism destinations. Today, Robin is the Executive Director for the Grand Junction Economic Partnership in Grand Junction, Colorado – a city that depends on its public lands for a healthy and diversified economy. Robin and her family spend most of their time outdoors hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, biking, running and sometimes just sitting. She serves as the west slope hunting representative for Colorado’s Wildlife Council.

Rachel VandeVoort

Rachel VandeVoort is the director of the Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation. A lifelong Montana girl, fisherman and hunter, Rachel has a degree in resource conservation, watershed management and fisheries from the University of Montana and has spent most of her career working in the outdoor recreation industry, previously as trade relations and marketing manager for Kimber Mfg. In 2017, Gov. Steve Bullock appointed Rachel to create and direct the Montana Governor’s Office of Outdoor Recreation. She lives, works and plays in Whitefish with her two sons.

Hal Herring

Host of BHA’s Podcast & Blast, an award-winning journalist and contributing editor at Field & Stream, Hal Herring has written for a wide range of publications including The Atlantic, The Economist and Bugle. He’s a lifelong outdoorsman, mountaineer, hunter and fisherman whose fans have come to expect deeply reported, thought-provoking stories and essays. Born and raised in north Alabama, Hal lives in Augusta, Montana.

T. Edward Nickens

T. Edward Nickens has reported on conservation, the outdoors and rural culture for some of the world's most respected publications for over three decades. He is editor at large for Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Audubon magazine. His work has appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, Garden & Gun, Shooting Sportsman, Sporting Classics and many other titles. His two books for Field & Stream have sold more than 250,000 copies. His works have been collected in a half-dozen "best of" anthologies and won numerous awards. In addition, Nickens has served as host, writer and field producer for Field & Stream's television shows The Gun Nuts and The Total Outdoorsman Challenge as well as the award-winning Heroes of Conservation webisode series. He has consulted as a speaker, speechwriter, white-paper author and communications specialist for a range of conservation organizations. Nickens lives in Raleigh and Morehead City, North Carolina. 

Juanita Vero

Greenough, Montana’s Juanita Vero is a fourth-generation partner of the E Bar L Ranch, one of Montana's oldest family-owned and -operated dude ranches. She also serves as a Missoula County Commissioner. Juanita doesn't know a tippet from her elbow, nor does she hunt, but she cares deeply about intact ecosystems, working landscapes and public access. She's been known to break ground-squirrel necks and eat them.

Shane Mahoney

Shane Patrick Mahoney, president of Conservation Visions and founder of the Wild Harvest Initiative®, is an internationally recognized conservationist and wildlife advocate, and a foremost expert on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Shane’s major career focus has been the population ecology of large mammals; moose, black bears, and caribou. 

A strong advocate for communicating wildlife conservation issues to the public, he has also written more than 100 popular magazine articles, penned eight published book chapters, and was the editor and contributing author for two monographs on sustainable wildlife use in North America for the International Journal of Environmental Studies.  In 2019, Johns Hopkins University Press launched his latest book project, an edited volume about the North American Conservation Model.

Intensely passionate, highly insightful, and often challenging in his views, Shane is one of those rare individuals who can reach deeply into our own thoughts about wildlife and nature and somehow help us better understand why we feel as we do… and why our conservation mission is so important.