John Mclean (Vice Chair) has a life-long passion for the Sonoran desert, and has spent many years exploring the bounty and diversity of this habitat on both sides of the border. Trained as a mathematician, John enjoyed a thirty-five year career developing high-resolution remote sensing systems. He has held a variety of executive and board positions for both corporate and non-profit organizations. John is currently raising various heirloom crops on the banks of Sabino Creek.  

Joy Hought (Executive Director) has built her career as an executive, researcher, educator, and author, having received a Master of Science in agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Joy pursued fieldwork in northern Europe and Cambodia before arriving in Arizona to explore low-input agriculture and on-farm conservation. She has co-authored several journal articles as well as the book Saving Seeds in the Southwest: Techniques for Seed Stewardship in Aridlands.

Joy’s focus is in leveraging Native Seeds/SEARCH’S resources in support of cultural restoration for Native American farmers, economic development, youth agricultural training, and direct local access to nutrition to address food insecurity.                       

Noah Schlager (Conservation Program Manager) has worked for several years on deconstructing the colonial legacies which have historically excluded Indigenous people from participating in western conservation, and to see spaces opened up for Indigenous people to have the agency and discretion to practice and share (or not share) our Indigenous knowledges around caring for plants and the land. In his capacity at NS/S, Noah is working to integrate the conservation of the collection’s seeds with the support and development of Native American farmers and their communities. Through his mother, Donna Wiggins, he is Mvskoke-Creek and Florida Catawba/Cheraw— mixed with Carolina Indian, West African, and European Settler heritage. Through his father, Dan Schlager, he is Jewish, his family settling in Colorado as refugees of the Eastern European pogroms. Noah’s maternal grandmother, Mama Nell Wiggins, was the one who first taught him to garden, forage, and cook foods that have been in his family since time immemorial. Out of the passion she and other elders have planted in him, he works to support his and other communities’ Indigenous foodways and relationships to the land. Noah received his Masters of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is grateful to be working on the lands of the Tohono O’odham and Yaqui, and takes seriously the responsibility to care for the plant relatives of Indigenous nations and communities across the greater Southwest.