This story is part of a series highlighting the contributions women have made to the Forest Service. If you’d like to nominate someone to be featured in a HerStory piece, please contact Patricia Burel.

WASHINGTON – Yewah Lau is district ranger on the Hood Canal Ranger District of the Olympic National Forest. She holds a master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University and came to the Forest Service in 2002 as a Presidential Management Fellow working in the Program and Budget Analysis staff at the Washington Office. Having begun her career where many people end theirs, Lau took a detail doing National Environmental Policy Act work on the Umpqua National Forest to get closer to the field. She never returned to the WO. Over nearly two decades Lau has held multiple positions in the National Forest System. Among other assignments, she has worked as a NEPA coordinator on the Olympic, a forest planner on the Coconino, a business and planning staff officer on the Deschutes and Ochoco, and finally, back to the Olympic for her current district ranger post, where she won an award for her handling of the 2018 Maple Fire.

Throughout her career Lau has received help from her coworkers’ friendliness and mentorship. She considers her time as a Presidential Management Fellow in the early 2000s as her formative agency experience and regards many of the people she worked with as aunts and uncles. That warm feeling continued when LAu arrived in the Pacific Northwest, with a particularly kind welcome from her supervisor on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. She remained in the West largely due to advice from Lisa Friedman, then-regional director for planning for Region 6. “I consider her my fairy godmother in a way,” Lau said.

Looking back on two decades in the agency, Lau notes a shift in leadership style and agency culture. She recalls stories from older employees that characterized the agency as a much more decentralized, command and control-oriented organization and notes the shift during her own tenure toward a more centralized, cross-boundary orientation. Ultimately, Lau treasures the personal connections most. She’s grateful for the kindness and passion of fellow employees, and the times “where they extended themselves in ways that weren’t required or expected of them at all, and yet they chose to do so.”

Follow the link to listen to Turner’s oral history.