Sky Guritz
Assistant Director, Division of Wildlife Conservation – Alaska Department of Fish & Game • Fundamentals Cohort 3
WCLDP Program
Putting It Into
Practice
The impacts of WCLDP are broad — participants take away tools that shape them both professionally and personally. For Sky Guritz, adaptive leadership didn’t stay in the classroom. It became a daily practice.
“I practice the skills and concepts of adaptive leadership every day, everywhere; it has become a passion of mine. I have a greater capacity for discomfort, speaking to courage, assessing risk, and am empowered to embrace uncomfortable conversations.”
– Sky Guritz
Applied Leadership
From Concepts to Conservation —
Every Day
Sky applies the technical frameworks of adaptive leadership directly in her work at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game — not as a theoretical exercise, but as a living lens for diagnosing the challenges in front of her.
“I observe technical versus adaptive challenges all the time and that has been very useful in problem solving. I can observe when people are practicing leadership — many who have never had any formal training — and it excites and inspires me.”
That ability to see leadership in action — even without a label on it — is one of the quieter, more powerful gifts of the program. It shifts not just how fellows lead, but how they see.
The Shift
From Overwhelmed to Adaptive
Wildlife conservation leadership carries enormous stress — complex science, contested policy, limited resources, and deeply human conflict. WCLDP equips fellows to meet that pressure differently: not by eliminating it, but by transforming it.
Sky’s Experience
As Assistant Director of Alaska’s Division of Wildlife Conservation, Sky brings adaptive leadership tools into one of the most complex conservation environments in the country — and credits the practice with sustaining both her effectiveness and her joy in the work.
Building Allies
A Network of Shared Language and Mutual Courage
“The best part is I have allies and I’m so excited about that; I can push them and they can push me and it makes us better. There’s enough trust there to have hard conversations. When I volunteer to assist on various projects, I find other adaptive leadership trained colleagues are also showing up.”
— Sky Guritz · Cohort 3
“Adaptive leadership keeps me resilient and happy. The natural consequence of showing up authentically is developing strong and brave relationships. I’m letting other people be authentic even if it means others won’t like me.”
— Sky Guritz · Cohort 3
Why It Matters
Stress Into
Strategy
01
Capacity for Discomfort
Fellows develop a greater tolerance for the tensions that come with complex, human-centered conservation work — without shutting down or burning out.
02
Seeing Challenges Clearly
The ability to distinguish technical from adaptive challenges — and respond accordingly — is among the most practical skills WCLDP builds.
03
Authentic Relationships
Showing up honestly — even when it’s risky — creates the kind of trust that makes hard conversations possible and durable change likely.
04
Sustained Resilience
Adaptive leadership isn’t just a professional tool — it’s a practice that sustains wellbeing and keeps conservation leaders engaged for the long haul.
Adaptive leadership practitioners are having an outsized impact on their organizations — transforming the stress of hard challenges into an intricate puzzle worth working through together.
THE POWER OF WE
“I struggle with talking about ‘I’ because when adaptive leadership is in action you know it’s working because ‘we’ are working together, when nothing feels like yours and it’s hard to identify who gets credit for it.”
— Sky Guritz · Cohort 3