Meet the Funga Team: Cal Oakley

Get to know the Funga crew with this newest installment of our "Meet the Team" series. Come back monthly to meet more team members, hear about their journey to Funga, and understand their vital role in our community.

We’re big fans of the “Today I get to….” mentality. So, what do you get to do every day at Funga?

Every day I get to do something different! As one of Funga’s foresters, I oversee a large portion of our field work, but I’m also involved in all the planning and decision making that happens before the truck pulls out of the driveway. That means that on any given day I could be collecting data in the field, planting trees, meeting with partners, or improving operational systems in the office. The innovative nature of our work means a lot of what we do has never been done before, and I get excited to come to work knowing that no two days are ever the same.

If you had to explain what Funga does to a third grader, what would you say?

People get the energy they need to grow by eating food. When we eat different kinds of foods we also get vitamins that help keep us healthy. Trees also need energy to grow, but they get their energy from sunlight, which doesn’t come with vitamins like our food. So for trees to grow they need to get their vitamins from somewhere else. They solve this problem by using their roots to get vitamins out of the soil, but they aren’t very good at doing this on their own. That’s where Funga comes in. We introduce young trees to helpful fungi that live in the soil and like to grow on tree roots. These fungi are way better at getting vitamins from soil and they help the trees get the vitamins they need to grow big and strong. And the fungi get to grow big and strong too because the trees give them the extra energy they get from the sun.

Tell us a little bit about your life. How did it lead you to Funga?

Growing up I was lucky enough to go to camp every summer. This was in the mountains of western North Carolina, which if you’ve been to you know is one of the most beautiful places in the eastern US. I think it was there that I caught the nature bug that would eventually lead me to Funga.

Before that though, the bug put it in my head to study biology. So throughout high-school and college I gravitated towards the biological sciences and eventually graduated from the University of the South with a BS in Biology. While there I was first exposed to forestry and was hooked by the way it took scientific principles and applied them to landscape level ecosystem management. Like many folks my age, I grew up loving nature but was constantly frustrated hearing how our natural systems have been degraded over the past two centuries. So in addition to my BS I earned a Minor in Forestry with the goal of building a career around applying science for ecological benefits.

With this goal in mind, I pursued a Master’s in Forest Resource Management from Duke University and then began a position with the US Forest Service’s Southern Research Station. There I worked with scientists researching forest health threats like insects, diseases, and invasive plants to develop new best management practices for our National Forest System.

Now I get to continue developing new, science-based techniques for improving the health of forests at Funga. I believe that resource management and biodiversity are not mutually exclusive and that Funga is committed to shifting the status quo in that direction.

What is your favorite part of the job?

I love the work, but my favorite part of the job is the people. This includes my fellow Fungans (who are the best teammates I’ve ever worked with), but also extends to everyone with whom we partner. In the climate space people can sometimes get overlooked in favor of acres conserved or tons of carbon sequestered, but Funga takes a very people-centric approach to all of its projects. Good forest management means not only growing healthy forests, but doing so while supporting the communities that depend on them. Funga knows that and it makes me proud to come to work each day. 

What is one workflow/productivity tool or trick that you can’t live without?

I love paper. Notebooks, loose-leaf, even the margins of old printed documents, I love being able to write stuff down on paper. It makes my desk look crazy, but it helps me prioritize tasks and remember ideas better than anything else.

What trivia round would you know every answer to?

I love 🦕 dinosaurs 🦖, please ask me about them.

Can you share a favorite memory of/with the Funga team?

I started at Funga just a couple weeks before our annual inoculation campaign. So before I had even completed my onboarding I was out in the sun with my new coworkers, sweating for twelve hours a day at one of our partner nurseries. These were hard days and all-in-all we worked three straight weeks without much rest. Now looking back, the days all blend together a bit, but the day we finished stands out in my memory because despite how exhausted we were, and how long we’d been away from our homes and families, everyone seemed genuinely sad to leave. That’s when I knew that Funga was a special place to work. Not only does everyone care about our work, but they also care about each other and I made some great friends during that campaign.