Barbi Hayes S3E120

Environmental consultant and biologist Barbi Hayes talks about a passion for the natural world that encouraged her as a nontraditional student to study biology and later to start her own environmental and research consultancy. Revealing a zest for life, Hayes shares her advocacy for changing our attitudes to nature and how we live with and within it.Barbi Hayes earned her degree in biology from the College of Saint Mary, after which she went on to found Hayes Environmental LLC, an environmental regulatory and research company, which she ran from 1994 to 2020. Hayes is a managing partner in two farming operations - one called Roy Johnson Family Partnership and the other Soybean Babes LLC. Hayes was the first woman appointed to the Douglas County Planning Commission in 1995 and was elected the first woman chairman in 2003. Hayes’s love for nature inspired her donation of her family’s 1900s-era historic barn to Glacier Creek Preserve for the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s environmental research and education facility. As well as her love for nature, Hayes’s love for art resulted in the MoonRise Gallery, an art gallery in downtown Elkhorn, which after several years closed its doors at the New Year.