Steve Marchi is the recreation, engineering, lands, minerals, heritage, and hydropower staff officer on the Umpqua National Forest in Roseburg, OR. He oversees a number of programs, including transportation engineering, facilities, recreation, lands, minerals, fleet management, and the hydropower program, along with its associated hydropower mitigation fund. He supervises a staff of 23 employees at various locations in the forest.

Marchi enjoys collaboration and working with internal and external groups that both support and question the programs and mandates of the agency. He worked with an alliance of both motorized and nonmotorized interest groups to find common ground on travel and access issues related to Subparts A and B of the Travel Management Rule. He found this area of interaction of agency policy and local social and political issues to be a rewarding challenge.

Marchi has been active at the regional level as a co–lead of the Pacific Northwest Region sustainable facilities initiative. He participated in a regional leadership team field trip that considered ways to reduce facility footprints to help ensure a safe and economically sustainable infrastructure. He also worked on a regional team to evaluate the services engineering provides to line officers. The team conducted surveys to determine what both line officers and engineering require to be successful using reduced budgets. They identified the most urgent services line officers require from engineering, determined key disciplines, and considered line officer concerns about how a more centralized organization could serve their needs.

Marchi is complimentary of the employees he supervises, feeling that they do all the hard work and deserve opportunities to advance both their careers and knowledge. He believes when his employees are successful, everyone is successful. He encourages his high-preforming employees to take leadership training, such as the “Middle Leader” and “National New Leader” programs. A member of his staff has enrolled in one of these programs nearly every year, and he feels that these opportunities have paid significant dividends for the agency.

Marchi received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Idaho. He is a registered professional engineer in Ohio. He began his Forest Service career in 1989 as a GS-2 survey technician on the Payette National Forest in Idaho. After graduating from college, he worked on the Payette and then on the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota. He worked as the forest engineer on the Wayne National Forest in Ohio for 10 years, and has been with the Umpqua for 5 years. He and his family enjoy Oregon and the outdoor activities there very much.