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Partnerships on the Frontlines: Grand County and Flash Forest
The FireTech Podcast Season 2 (2025) examines emerging dynamics of public-private-people partnerships (4Ps) in building wildfire resilience. Through conversations with community partners and technical leads, host Shefali Lakhina examines how diverse partners cultivate trust, accountability, and responsiveness to shared wildfire resilience goals on the frontlines. In this episode host Shefali Lakhina speaks with Jessica Rahn, Executive Director of Grand County Wildfire Council, Colorado, and Marc Apduhan, Innovation and Business Development Manager with Flash Forest, a regenerative startup based in Canada.
Matched as part of Conservation X Labs’ Fire Grand Challenge (2025), Jessica and Marc have been working to replant landscapes impacted by the East Troublesome Fire in 2020. Flash Forest is helping Grand County explore how drones guided by AI can distribute seed pods for replanting.
Jessica has a background in Human Resources Management with a Masters in Organizational Leadership from Regis University. She became interested in wildfire mitigation, education, and prevention after losing her home in the East Troublesome Fire in 2020, joining the Wildfire Council's Education Committee as a volunteer in April of 2023. Jessica is honored to be a part of moving this important work forward for the community. Grand County Wildfire Council (GCWC) is a non-profit, community-based wildfire education and mitigation program for the residents and visitors of Grand County, Colorado. https://bewildfireready.org/
Marc has over thirteen years in the environmental space, where he has worked in water and wastewater treatment, contaminated site remediation, and post-fire drone reforestation. He is currently the Innovation and Business Development Manager for Flash Forest, where his focus is on inter-organizational projects to enhance technologies in site suitability software, seedpod biotechnology, and drone/land hardware deployment systems to improve post-fire restoration efforts. His background is in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Flash Forest’s advanced reforestation automation technology merges UAV, AI, GIS, engineering, silviculture and plant science to scale reforestation to meet the growing demands of private and public partners across North America. https://www.flashforest.com/our-tech
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By Shefali J Lakhina
4.3
33 ratings
The FireTech Podcast Season 2 (2025) examines emerging dynamics of public-private-people partnerships (4Ps) in building wildfire resilience. Through conversations with community partners and technical leads, host Shefali Lakhina examines how diverse partners cultivate trust, accountability, and responsiveness to shared wildfire resilience goals on the frontlines. In this episode host Shefali Lakhina speaks with Jessica Rahn, Executive Director of Grand County Wildfire Council, Colorado, and Marc Apduhan, Innovation and Business Development Manager with Flash Forest, a regenerative startup based in Canada.
Matched as part of Conservation X Labs’ Fire Grand Challenge (2025), Jessica and Marc have been working to replant landscapes impacted by the East Troublesome Fire in 2020. Flash Forest is helping Grand County explore how drones guided by AI can distribute seed pods for replanting.
Jessica has a background in Human Resources Management with a Masters in Organizational Leadership from Regis University. She became interested in wildfire mitigation, education, and prevention after losing her home in the East Troublesome Fire in 2020, joining the Wildfire Council's Education Committee as a volunteer in April of 2023. Jessica is honored to be a part of moving this important work forward for the community. Grand County Wildfire Council (GCWC) is a non-profit, community-based wildfire education and mitigation program for the residents and visitors of Grand County, Colorado. https://bewildfireready.org/
Marc has over thirteen years in the environmental space, where he has worked in water and wastewater treatment, contaminated site remediation, and post-fire drone reforestation. He is currently the Innovation and Business Development Manager for Flash Forest, where his focus is on inter-organizational projects to enhance technologies in site suitability software, seedpod biotechnology, and drone/land hardware deployment systems to improve post-fire restoration efforts. His background is in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Flash Forest’s advanced reforestation automation technology merges UAV, AI, GIS, engineering, silviculture and plant science to scale reforestation to meet the growing demands of private and public partners across North America. https://www.flashforest.com/our-tech