Tania Carlone

Tania Carlone is the Director of CBI West and Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute. She brings more than 20 years of experience in community organizing, organizational leadership and education in the United States and internationally. For the past 10 years, Tania has provided facilitation and mediation services with a focus on collaboration and consensus building in multi-party water and natural resources policy environments. Prior to coming to CBI, Tania was a Senior Mediator at the Center for Collaborative Policy at California State University Sacramento. She is based out of the San Francisco office.

Areas of Focus

Tania’s primary focus is building the capacity of parties to collaborate and reach agreement on complex issues. Tania assists individuals and groups with diverse perspectives collaborate in various policy areas, most notably water and natural resources as well as land management and land use. She works with a wide range of stakeholders, including federal, state, and local agencies; Tribal governments; disadvantaged communities; nonprofits; and advocacy groups. In her practice, she uses a breadth of tools and strategies, such as situational assessments, communications and engagement plans, and on-line technologies to bring to light interests and areas of conflict and ultimately to achieve outcomes that are broadly supported. She has been embedded in the implementation of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act since 2015. In this capacity, she facilitates large-scale public engagement events throughout the state and negotiates the creation of new local and regional governing agencies to regulate and manage groundwater. Additionally, Tania has recently served as the community engagement lead on a high-profile land re-use project for an 860-acre state-owned site in Sonoma Valley, California.

Tania also designs collaborative processes to improve organizational effectiveness. She facilitates strategic planning efforts with nonprofits and public agencies and provides strategic guidance to organizational leaders. She creates the requisite structure to facilitate dialogue in small organizational settings and large workshops and events for hundreds of participants.

Exemplary Projects

• Sonoma Developmental Center Site Assessment and Conceptual Master Plan
• Groundwater Sustainability Agency Governance and Formation in Shasta, Butte, Glenn and Colusa Counties
• Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Management Program Basin Advisory Panel
• The Martis Fund Strategic Organizational Assessment
• Lower Walnut Creek Restoration Project- Phase I Plan
• Department of Pesticide Regulation Pest Management Advisory Committee
• United States Forest Service Region 5 Early Adopter Forests Core Team Assessment
• Integrated Regional Water Management Planning in Yuba County and the Cosumnes, American, Bear and Yuba (CABY) Watersheds

Clients

The following is a partial list of clients:

Federal Agencies

• U.S. Forest Service Region 5
• U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Motherlode Field Office

State Agencies

• California Department of Water Resources
• California State Water Resources Control Board
• California Department of Pesticide Regulation
• California Department of General Services
• California Department of Developmental Services
• California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy
• Sierra Nevada Conservancy

Local Municipalities

• Sonoma County Water Agency, CA
• Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, CA
• Yuba County Water Agency, CA

Companies/Nonprofit Organizations

• The Martis Fund
• Sonoma Land Trust
• Galapagos Conservancy
• Dyer Engineering Associates
• Environmental Science Associates
• Wallace Roberts and Todd

Education and Affiliations

Tania holds a master’s degree in education and organizational leadership and a B.A. in political science with emphases in public policy and peace and conflict studies from the University of San Francisco.

Books and Articles

M.E. DuPraw, S. Di Vittorio, D. Ceppos, M.D. Wylie, M. Kopell, S. Lucero, T. Carlone, M. Meyer, and S. Horii. 2017. Groundwater Sustainability Plans: California’s Newly-Formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies – The Rewards of Optimizing Effective Coordination and Collaboration. The Water Report: Issue 162, August.