Read more about the 2025 Local Heroes:
Susan Schwartz, Community Hero
Mirella Ramos, Environmental Educator
Sunday mornings often find Annie Burke on a paddleboard with her friends in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, doing battle with a barnacle-encrusted shopping cart or two. There are dozens lodged in the mudflats along the East Bay’s shoreline, part of the assorted urban detritus polluting the water, and Burke paddles out to haul them back to shore for appropriate disposal.
“It’s very satisfying,” she says. Those peaceful mornings on the water, as cars hum by on Highway 80 and shorebirds ripple over the Bay, return Burke to the wonder that has connected her with nature.
For Burke, the executive director of TOGETHER Bay Area, conservation is a huge umbrella term. “I don’t spend very much time navel-gazing about what the word means,” she says. “I focus on land and taking care of the land in all of the ways that need to happen.”
Burke grew up in the Bay Area, among plant- and animal-lovers. Still, “I wouldn’t have called myself an environmentalist,” she says. Sixteen years ago, after she gave birth to her second son, something shifted in her. “I had a profound realization while holding my son in my arms . . . the world was really quiet on climate change,” she says. “I decided I wanted to put my professional skills and my whole being toward [climate] solutions.”
That realization brought Burke to the Bay Area Open Space Council, which then convened local land managers, land trusts, and conservationists. Though unintentionally, it wasn’t an inviting space. “You had to be of a certain position and know certain people,” Burke says.
In 2019, Burke helped transform the Open Space Council into TOGETHER Bay Area, expanding the organization’s work to build coalitions around climate resilience and equity, recognizing that social transformation must accompany the bread-and-butter land acquisition work that has often narrowly defined conservation. This “yes, and” approach underpins Burke’s philosophy. She has expanded the range of people who see themselves as part of conservation here, uniting 82 agencies, nonprofits, mission-aligned businesses, and local Native American tribes and groups.
For Burke, it’s less about prescribing set actions and more about helping people connect in order to dream, and find solutions, together. “I’m increasingly interested in creating space for the magic of people to happen,” Burke says.
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It’s been a long five years; Burke has overseen TOGETHER Bay Area through a pandemic, funding uncertainties, and organizational upheaval. Under her leadership, TOGETHER Bay Area unites Bay-wide conservation stakeholders at an annual conference, supports the Conservation Lands Network, and most recently has organized groups to pass Proposition 4, a historic $10 billion funding commitment for climate resilience across California. Burke also co-chairs California’s committee for statewide conservation protections and, with Redbud Resource Group, co-leads the Right Relations program to advocate for Native sovereignty and partnerships. “I don’t believe in the apocalypse,” she says. “When you bring people together . . . they can solve anything, if the conditions are right.”
