Tania Carlone

Tania Carlone serves as Director of CBI West and Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute. A collaboration specialist with 30 years of experience in community organizing, organizational leadership, and education across the United States and internationally, she has spent the past 15 years providing dynamic facilitation and mediation services for complex environmental and social challenges requiring multi-jurisdictional collaboration. Tania specializes in consensus building for multi-party, cross-boundary water and natural resource policy initiatives. Previously, she worked as a Senior Mediator at the Center for Collaborative Policy at California State University Sacramento. She is based in Berkeley, California.

Areas of Focus

Tania builds stakeholder capacity to collaborate and reach agreement on complex issues. She works with diverse groups including federal, state, and local agencies; Tribal governments; disadvantaged communities; nonprofits; and advocacy organizations. She designs collaborative processes to improve organizational effectiveness, facilitates strategic planning efforts with nonprofits and public agencies, and provides strategic guidance to organizational leaders. Her practice employs a broad range of tools and strategies that illuminate interests and conflict areas while achieving broadly supported outcomes.

Since 2015, Tania has been deeply involved in implementing California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. She has facilitated large-scale public engagement events statewide and mediated on the creation of new local and regional governing agencies to regulate groundwater management in 10 Northern California basins. Her work spans regional collaboration across jurisdictional boundaries through interbasin groundwater coordination in the Northern Sacramento Valley and re-negotiation of the Sacramento Water Forum Agreement to balance water supply with river health on the lower American River. She has also facilitated strategic collaboration on landscape-scale forest restoration in the Central Sierra Nevada, most notably with the Amador Calaveras Consensus Group. Additionally, Tania served as community engagement lead for a high-profile land reuse project involving an 860-acre state-owned site in Sonoma Valley and has worked on projects to increase housing production in San Francisco Bay Area communities.

Exemplary Projects

• Sacramento Water Forum 2050
• North Sacramento River Corridor Interbasin Coordination
• Sacramento Valley Flood Diversion Recharge Enhancement Work Group
• Palo Alto Downtown Housing Plan
• Salinas River Operations Habitat Conservation Plan
• Monterey County Community Wellness Collaborative
• Pacific Institute Strategic Plan
• Oakland Metro Chamber Strategic Plan
• Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program
• San Diego Regional Water Board, Tribal Beneficial Uses
• Owens Lake Cultural Resources Task Force
• Sonoma Developmental Center Site Assessment and Conceptual Master Plan
• Sustainable Groundwater Management Act implementation in Shasta, Butte, Glenn, Colusa, Sierra, and Plumas Counties
• Amador Calaveras Consensus Group
• Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Management Program Basin Advisory Panel
• Meeks Bay Restoration Project Assessment
• Truckee River Basin Water Group
• Coalition to Support Delta Projects
• 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, the Lahontan Basins, 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
• Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)

State Agencies

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

Local Municipalities

• City of Sacramento, CA
• City of Palo Alto, CA
• City of Petaluma
• County of Sonoma, CA
• Sonoma County Water Agency, CA
• Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, CA
• Yuba County Water Agency, CA

Companies/Nonprofit Organizations

• National Audubon Society
• Pacific Institute
• Community Foundation of Monterey County
• The Martis Fund
• Sonoma Land Trust
• Galapagos Conservancy
• Dyer Engineering Associates
• Environmental Science Associates
• Wallace Roberts and Todd
• Stanec
• Oakland Metro Chamber

Education and Affiliations

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

Writing on CBI.org

• "Collaborative Learning for Collaborative Solutions"
• "Common Ground"

Books and Articles

American Bar Association, 2019. Environment, Energy, and Resources Law: The Year in Review, 2018. Contributor, Chapter 25: Alternative Dispute Resolution.

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.