Ekow Edzie

Ekow Edzie, Senior Associate with CBI West, is a bilingual (Spanish & English) collaborative process professional with ten years of experience in stakeholder engagement and facilitation across a diverse set of natural resource governance issues, both domestic and international.

Ekow facilitates and mediates environmental planning and public policy disputes. His primary practice areas include land use and groundwater management, natural and cultural resource management, and economic and social policy. Ekow is currently involved in facilitating negotiations and promoting effective public engagement on sustainable groundwater management and collaborative forestry initiatives. Examples of his recent work includes conducting a stakeholder assessment around opportunities for the Salinas Valley Basin GSA to improve support of regional disadvantaged communities; facilitating collaboration between representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, the California Tahoe Conservancy, and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency on the development of a coordinated forest restoration effort; and conducting a stakeholder assessment to inform natural resource management across the 17 National Forests that compose the Northwest Forest Plan.

Ekow has a master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Tufts University, where he concentrated in natural resource economics, land use policy, and negotiation, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College. Ekow was a Switzer Environmental Leadership Fellow, 2018-2019, and has served on the teaching team with the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation and the Harvard Negotiation Institute. 

Areas of Focus

Ekow facilitates and mediates environmental planning and public policy disputes. His primary practice areas include land use and groundwater management, natural and cultural resource management, and economic and social policy. 

Exemplary Projects

• Salinas Valley Basin GSA Disadvantaged Community Engagement
• Assessment and Convening on the Future of Work and Worker’s Rights
• Fox Canyon Groundwater SGMA Compliance Mediation
• Assessment of the Strategies for Resilience for Victims of Land Displacement in their return to Dairy Farming with the Land Restitution Unit in Colombia
• Northwest Forest Planning Stakeholder Assessment & Public Dialogues
• Lake Tahoe West Landscape-Level Forest Restoration Process
• Meeks Bay Restoration and Recreation Project Stakeholder Assessment

Education and Affiliations

Ekow has a BA in environmental studies with a minor in biology from Middlebury College and a master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Tufts University, where he concentrated in natural resource economics, land use policy, and negotiation. Ekow was a Switzer Fellow, 2018-2019, and a Fletcher School Class of 1967 Term Scholar.

Foreign Languages

Spanish: Functionally Native (Evaluated at The Fletcher School, April 2019)