Sharyn Main and Jim Hodgson: Passionate About Nature, Art, and Community
Few people in our community are more deeply devoted to the integrity of our natural world and imbued with the insight that humans are intrinsically part of nature than Sharyn Main and her husband, Jim Hodgson.
Jim was born in Alberta, Canada, and moved to Goleta with his family as a child in the 1960s. He has been fascinated by wildlife since his youth, leading him to an interest in biology, habitats, and nature conservation. He took up bird watching as a teenager, which remains his passion today with an impressive ‘Life List’ of birds he has observed in the Western U.S. and the Americas. A talent for drafting and illustration eventually propelled him into a career as a mechanical engineer, but his abiding love of nature and his artistic talent motivated him to develop a secondary, avocational career as a wildlife artist. His beautiful paintings of birds, rendered in oil, with great precision and obvious empathy for the subjects, are based on his own extensive field observations.
Sharyn is a fourth-generation Santa Barbara County resident whose family moved from the north county, where her parents grew up, to Santa Barbara when she was young. She was allowed to be a “free-range kid,” enjoying hiking, the beach, and exploring wild areas. Sharyn has maintained a lifelong interest and involvement in art, theater, and dance. The horrendous Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, and the first Earth Day in 1970, made deep impressions on her.
Her love of nature and strong belief that we all have the power to affect change led her to the Community Environmental Council in the 1990s, where she helped create and manage the household hazardous waste program, reignite the Earth Day celebration and develop policies and programs to prevent pollution and protect local watersheds. Her deep interest in the community propelled her to shift from CEC to the philanthropic sector in 1999, where she held positions with the Wendy P. McCaw Foundation and the Santa Barbara Foundation. This allowed her to direct resources—and partner with organizations, including CEC—to create initiatives to strengthen the food system and protect natural resources. She then returned to CEC soon after the 2018 Montecito Debris Flow, to lead a series of climate resilience roundtables and developed our Climate Resilience program. Today Sharyn is a private consultant, working with nonprofits and community groups on issues of conservation, biodiversity and climate resilience.
Jim and Sharyn believe that “we are deeply connected to nature and are part of the Earth's greater ecosystem of plants, animals, air, water and soil. It is our responsibility as humans to help repair and heal this incredible planet.”
They are both modest and unassuming, but it would be hard to find anybody who has had a more profound impact on our community than Sharyn and Jim, who unfailingly convert their beliefs and words into action. They have designated a portion of their estate as a bequest to the Community Environmental Council in their will. We are deeply grateful for their generous legacy gift as well as for everything they have done, and continue to do, for our community.