Our Vision
Promoting a culture of sharing that guides river restoration
Our Mission
Developing and advancing best practices, funding sources, regulatory solutions, and the workforce for restoring the environment by restoring rivers.
Our “SHARED” Philosophy
Share knowledge with humility
Have patience and discernment for innovation
Advocate excellence
Respect the risk and uncertainty in river systems
Empower, challenge and question
Document and learn from unexpected results
Bylaws
RiverSHARED bylaws can be found at the following link, RiverSHARED Bylaws.
Board of Directors
Gina Crowder Levesque, President
Gina Crowder Levesque has worked with endangered species and habitats as a professional biologist for 35+ years. She holds degrees focused on restoration ecology/conservation biology from Purdue University and the University of Arkansas, with additional graduate work from Oklahoma State University. She is currently a riparian ecologist with Five Smooth Stones Restoration.
David Bidelspach, PE, 5 Smooth Stones Restoration
Mr. Bidelspach is a nationally recognized river restoration specialist with a broad range of experience restoring damaged ecosystems. Mr. Bidelspach’s academic and research background includes five years with the Stream Restoration Program at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where he provided assessment, design, and construction oversight services on many restoration projects and taught courses related to river assessment, restoration design, and construction administration. He also worked for nine years as the river restoration technical leader for a large engineering consulting firm. He has completed more than 100 river restoration/stabilization projects in 29 states, 6 Canadian Provinces/Territories, and Costa Rica. Mr. Bidelspach was mentored at NCSU by Dr. Greg Jennings and at Wildland Hydrology by Dr. Dave Rosgen. He specializes in using Natural Channel Design (NCD) coupled with a traditional engineering framework for river restoration designs to achieve optimal project goals and objectives. The MCDA framework has been utilized and taught by Mr. Bidelspach and incorporates NCD, three-dimensional (3-D) stream design, limiting factors analysis for fisheries, flood risk, geomorphic assessment, river resiliency, cost analysis, changing points of diversion, and stakeholder involvement into a design optimization scheme.
Bruce Hankee, B.S., M.Div.
Bruce retired in May, 2015, after 40 years of active pastoral ministry and still remains deeply involved in serving the community through various Christian outreaches to the under-resourced and those in need in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. He has been involved in the creation of various boards and ministries and counts it a privilege to serve with the RiverSHARED board to bring people together for river restoration.
George Kelly
Mr. Kelly is a graduate of Tulane University (B.A.) and a cum laude JD and MSL (Masters in Environmental Law) graduate of the Vermont Law School. He is the founding member of Bespoke Mitigation Partners, a customized environmental business and project advisory firm.
He also served as the Chief Markets Officer from 2014-2019 and remains as a strategic advisor to the Board of Resource Environmental Solutions (RES). Prior to joining RES, Mr. Kelly was the founder and director for Environmental Banc & Exchange, LLC (EBX) from 1997 to 2014.
Mr. Kelly served on the Board for almost ten years and was elected as the President of the National Mitigation Banking Association (US) in 2009 and was recently appointed to serve on the EPA Financial Advisory Board.
Imanthie Bandara
Imanthie is an intern at Five Smooth Stones Restoration and has a Bachelors’ degree in Biosystems Engineering from Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. Imanthie is originally from Sri Lanka and now residing in Colorado. During her undergraduate studies she has volunteered with student organizations within the university and is very passionate about nature, music, and art.
Her goal of being part of the RiverSHARED organization is to be a contributor to create a process that shares good life skills/technical skills and provides learning opportunities for the underprivileged people around the world by becoming strong in her technical knowledge as a stream restoration professional and with great relationships she is gathering on the way.
Josh Gilman
Josh Gilman is a Stantec stream restoration design engineer and environmental scientist with 28 years of experience. His passion for good stewardship has been applied in the US and Canada on projects throughout various sectors ranging from stream/wetland mitigation and urban stream enhancement to other less conventional out-of-sector projects (such as community development, industrial asset management, and progressive hybrid transportation practices).
Josh strives to understand and align with project sponsor-specific interests toward seeking a balanced approach to problem-solving. Mr. Gilman’s experience-based knowledge enables meaningful contributions throughout the process, from planning/conceptualization through construction, contract administration and monitoring. Sample career experience includes serving the Colorado River as a research scientist, implementing experimental fish passage design, dam removal, and mitigation while all the meanwhile regularly performing associated stream restoration. Currently, Josh primarily provides operational and technical leadership on ecological restoration projects.
Matt Strahman
Matt Stahman has over 25 years of professional experience in the environmental consulting and mitigation, and ecological restoration industries. Matt serves as Director of Regulatory for RES, an ecological restoration firm providing client-focused wetland, stream, and species mitigation offsets, green stormwater infrastructure, and corporate sustainability solutions nationwide. He serves as RES project manager on the ~17,000-acre ecological restoration and enhancement project for North Texas Municipal Water District’s Bois d’Arc Lake, one of the largest permittee-responsible mitigation projects in the Nation. Matt previously served as an environmental consultant conducting environmental permitting for the oil & gas, electric transmission, generation, land development, water resources, and transportation sectors. Matt specializes in Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act permitting, compliance, and mitigation and is a Professional Wetland Scientist (PWS) through the Society of Wetland Scientists and a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) through the Society for Ecological Restoration. He is also currently Chairman of the Board for Houston Wilderness, a non-profit devoted to restoration, education, and promotion of our local Texas Gulf Coast ecosystems.