Midwest-raised Nicole Branton first started working for the U.S. Forest Service as an unpaid intern in Utah before her graduate program at the University of Arizona, and has served as red rock district ranger for four years.
As a woman trained in archaeology and social science, she ascended to a commanding position overwhelmingly held by male foresters and range specialists. Branton discussed her career, the many skillsets she’s cultivated and what its like being a woman in a leadership role serving 3 million visitors a year.
Q: How did you end up in the USFS?
A: I was incredibly fortunate to get into the Forest Service really early in my career. I grew up in St. Louis and really wasn’t aware of public lands and of the Forest Service .I was in college at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville majoring in anthropology when I met a Forest Service archaeologist who was interviewing for a faculty position there.
I was blown away that there was a job where you get to hike around a forest looking for artifacts people left behind thousands of years ago. I applied for a job as an unpaid intern on the Ashley National Forest and just fell in love with the West, with the idea that there are these massive areas of open land that belong to us as members of the public and with archaeology as part of how that land is managed.
I worked for two seasons on that forest before I went to graduate school at the University of Arizona and as a graduate student I was able to work for the Coronado National Forest there through the Cooperative Education Program.
So really, working as a public servant was baked into my whole education as an archaeologist. I then moved to the Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests and Pawnee National Grassland in northern Colorado as an archaeologist where I worked for twelve years.
During that time I also did temporary assignments as a district ranger and the liaison between the USFS and state government in South Dakota and as a strategic planner in the Forest Service’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was really those last years in Colorado of managing the cultural resource side of complex, political, usually energy-related projects that were controversial in nature and working in D.C. with the national budget and strategic planning that made me want to move away from being a resource specialist to a larger leadership role in the Forest Service.
Q: What do you love most about your job?
A: So many things. I love that I get to bring people together to work on incredibly complex problems that cannot be solved by one group or one perspective alone. I love that my work matters to people.
It’s an incredible responsibility to be the head housekeeper for a place that belongs to 319 million people and sees 3 million visitors a year and even when the work itself is difficult and full of conflicts I feel honored to have the opportunity to try to solve those problems. Even when people are unhappy with something that we do I still see it as citizens caring about their public lands. In this job in particular, I am so privileged to work with outstanding partners and employees, people who get out of bed in the morning intent on making the world a better place.
I honestly believe in the creative power of conflict because I have seen so many good things come out of people who start out disagreeing sitting down together to solve a problem.
Q: What are some down-sides or inherent challenges of your job?
A: The biggest challenge of being the district ranger here on the Red Rock Ranger District is finding a balance between serving people and serving the land, or sometimes serving different kinds of people. There are not a lot of easy answers.
Q: Who was your biggest mentor?
A: I’ve been fortunate to have several great mentors in my career, including that first forest archaeologist I met back in college and my forest supervisor in Colorado who made me see my leadership potential.
For most of my career as an archaeologist it never crossed my mind that I could be a district ranger. All the district rangers I had known were foresters or range specialists and most of them were men. I had never known an archaeologist or social scientist who became a district ranger.
When my forest supervisor called me to his office one day to ask me if I wanted to be considered for a temporary assignment as a district ranger I actually sort of argued with him and reminded him that I wasn’t a forester, which he, of course, knew.
He saw possibilities for me that I did not see in myself. It’s just a good example of how “you can’t be what you can’t see,” and how powerful it can be to tell people what you see in them. Now on this side of being a ranger, I think that being an anthropologist is probably the best possible preparation for being a ranger, at least in Sedona.
Q: Has simply being a woman ever brought about unnecessary challenges in your career in the USFS? If so, how?
A: I think being a woman in any kind of leadership position poses challenges. There is research to suggest that we have been conditioned by history, media, etc., to associate leadership with a certain tone of voice, way of expressing yourself and physical presence that is more common in men than in women.
Now that I have a formal position of leadership I actually find that my most effective tools are not about telling people what to do but about engaging them in solving problems and convening the right people to get things done.
I also appreciate that as a white, cisgender woman without any visible disabilities, I have a lot of advantages that others do not and I try to be very conscious of that and make sure I am not disregarding or overlooking somebody because of the way they speak, look or my preconceived ideas about them.
Q: What do you have to say to young girls interested in a career in the nation’s forests?
A: Please join us. I think the staff on the Red Rock Ranger District is about 50 percent female and 50 percent male, so it’s certainly not unusual for women to work here, although forestry and working outdoors in general isn’t often promoted by our society as a career for girls growing up.
Because of our diverse multiple-use mission, it really does take a lot of different kinds of people to make up the Forest Service and all those different perspectives and voices are needed and valued.
We may look the same in our uniforms but we are actually a lot of different kinds of people — scientists, planners, archaeologists, budget analysts, public affairs specialists, fire fighters, Wilderness specialists, range technicians, law enforcement officers, customer service specialists.
So in our day-to-day work we expect and value different perspectives. I think it’s so important for women, especially young women who are entering the job market, to recognize their value, and that they don’t need to try to make themselves like everybody else to “fit in.”
As a public servant, it’s much more important to me that my workforce reflects the diversity of the American people I serve than that they all see things the same way.
Q: Describe the most memorable experience you’ve had with USFS.
A: There have been so many memorable experiences working for the Forest Service. I’ve gotten to spend a week straight hiking in places others never make it to, found 10,000-year-old artifacts, spent whole days riding a horse, seen the entire Slide Fire from the air, been surrounded by dancing prairie chickens, sold people their Christmas tree and once nearly ran into a moose — not in a vehicle, I mean I actually almost walked into a moose.
Off the top of my head the standout for me is the first time I worked in the forest alone. I was documenting an old water flume and was already feeling pretty proud of myself for finding my way there without getting lost — remember that I grew up in the suburbs so reading a topo map was a new skill for me.
This was back in the day when you had to wait for the few available satellites to actually pass over you to GPS something with a big backpack GPS unit, so I was just quietly taking notes and waiting for those satellites, not making noise as I almost always do in the field and suddenly I hear this crashing noise from across the river coming at me.
I couldn’t see through the vegetation where the noise was coming from, I had no idea what it was, then all of a sudden a couple of coyote pups came crashing through the vegetation, across the river chasing each other and jumping on each other, playing like puppies do.
They were so busy playing they didn’t even notice me and ran right up close to me before I decided I better let them know I was there.
As soon as they saw me they ran away.It was just a really special feeling of being part of the natural world and seeing “behind the scenes” of what the forest is like when humans aren’t around
