Ann Hayden

Senior Director, CA Habitat Exchange and Western Water Environmental Defense Fund

Ann Hayden is the Senior Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Western Water program and the California Habitat Exchange program. Ann joined EDF in 2002 to help lead its efforts to restore the San Francisco Bay Delta estuary while improving urban and agricultural water supply reliability. She leads EDF's work in California to advance incentive-based approaches that ensure adequate water is available for rivers and wetlands, improve agriculture’s resilience in the face of variable water supplies, and address the water needs of disadvantaged communities. She also works with a wide range of partners to encourage the implementation of habitat markets that can restore critical habitat and benefit the agriculture economy in California. Ann has a long history of building broad coalitions of state and federal agencies, non-profit partners, landowners, and the private sector to support the implementation of environmental markets that help increase California's healthy freshwater and terrestrial systems and improve delivery of the environmental services these habitats provide. Ann earned an M.A. in Environmental Science and Management from UC Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in Marine Biology from UC Santa Cruz.