Featured Legacy Donors: John and Karen Jostes
Originally published: April 15, 2023
John and Karen Jostes are long-time Santa Barbara residents whose dedication to environmental sustainability and education has had many positive impacts throughout the community—including at CEC.
John grew up in Oakland, exploring urban creeks and taking regular backpacking and fishing excursions in the Sierras. Those early experiences in nature shaped his core environmental values.
The devastating impact of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the first Earth Day in 1970 also had a profound effect on him. At the time, he was studying for a BA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara. He decided to combine his training, passion, and values by moving into the nascent field of environmental planning, the City of Santa Barbara’s first Environmental Analyst at 27. Soon after, he founded the county’s first locally-owned environmental planning firm, specializing in preparing environmental impact reports (EIRs). John and his firm were instrumental in shaping California’s Environmental Quality Act. Additionally, John became a close collaborator of Paul Relis and Tom Rogers when he joined CEC’s fledgling board of directors.
In the 1980s, John earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard. Upon his return to Santa Barbara, he shifted into a new career as an environmental mediator. In this capacity, he has helped resolve many intractable and significant battles, including a conservation planning initiative between five federal agencies, three states, and other parties over water use in the Colorado River below Hoover Dam. John considers this project to be one of his proudest achievements. Current worries about the long-term future of the Colorado River and its importance for states, cities, and industries that rely on its water demonstrate the prescience of John’s efforts.
About the time he returned to Santa Barbara, he met his wife Karen, a fifth-generation Santa Barbara native and descendant of the Castagnolas, the legendary Santa Barbara fishing family.
John was eventually hired as a lecturer at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, where he taught courses in environmental negotiation, leadership, and project management. Convinced that training future generations of environmental stewards and leaders is crucial to the movement’s sustainability, John and Karen now fund a Special Opportunities initiative and summer intern fellowship program at the Bren School, helping students transition from academia to professional life.
John and Karen’s deep appreciation of CEC’s critical work in addressing the climate crisis motivated them to establish an exceedingly generous legacy gift for CEC. By designating our organization as a beneficiary of their IRAs and a Charitable Remainder Trust, John and Karen demonstrated their unwavering dedication to environmental causes. CEC thanks them for their lifelong support.