John W. Burke, J.D.
President
Mr. Burke is a former Naval Officer,
captaining a Swiftboat in Viet Nam as well as serving on a destroyer in
the Western Pacific and at the U.S. Naval Officers’ Candidate School
in Newport, Rhode Island, as a company officer. He has had more than 25
years of experience with the Department of Interior's Solicitor’s
Office, holding a variety of positions which have included the Regional
Solicitor for the Pacific Southwest Region in Sacramento, California,
and Chief Counsel for the National Park Service’s Presidio Project
in San Francisco. He also served as General Counsel/Executive Director
of Marine World, a 160-acre wildlife park in Vallejo, California.
He has distinguished himself as an outstanding facilitator
of partnering agreements between business and government with a track
record of success. He has managed the partnering process for large-scale
partnering agreements. He has facilitated and negotiated environmental
and land use projects among members of congress, federal departments and
bureaus, senior officials in the California governor's US office and departments
and senior-level business and industry leaders. He was appointed by the
Governor of California to the Sierra Summit Task Force whose mission was
to open a dialogue between senior government officials and business and
industry leaders in order to achieve a healthy, sustainable environment
in Sierra Nevada while also supporting the goals of the participating
representatives of the recreational, timber, and mining industries, as
well as water purveyors and manufacturing. Mr. Burke has extensive experience
supervising legal projects. As the Regional Solicitor for the Pacific
Southwest Region, he coordinated and oversaw the legal activities of the
Department of Interior for California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and the
Trust Territories. Mr. Burke has drafted legislation adopted by Congress
providing positive outcomes for stakeholders in the environment. He was
a litigator who negotiated effective resolutions for conflicts on behalf
of the Department of the Interior for 15 years. In this capacity, he has
appeared in court and negotiated small disputes to those involving hundreds
of millions of dollars affecting major segments of natural resources in
the Pacific Northwest and California. As Chief Counsel for the Presidio
Project, he was responsible for the legal activities pertaining to the
transfer of the Presidio from the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army to the
National Park Service and thereafter to the Presidio Trust.
Mr Burke is a graduate of Princeton University and George
Washington University Law School. He is a member of the California and
District of Columbia Bar Associations, as well as the Supreme Court, Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals, and the District Courts for Northern California
and the District of Columbia.
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