Sarah Peters

Managing Attorney

Sarah comes to our firm with a long-standing commitment to working for and on behalf of nonprofit organizations in every capacity, from volunteer to Executive Director and everything in between. She grew up roaming the fields and woods of southern Indiana on her parents small cattle farm and attended Indiana University, where she studied molecular biology before discovering her true scientific interests lived in the natural world outside of a laboratory. Graduating with a BS in Public Affairs, with a concentration in Environmental Management, Sarah immediately headed West.

Sarah quickly found her passion as a volunteer at the Colorado Mountain Club, exploring the wild and unprotected areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management and advocating for their protection. That passion eventually turned volunteer work into a job, working as part-time bookkeeper and part-time volunteer coordinator, recruiting others to join in the efforts to visit, and advocate to protect, these magnificent places.

Her desire to advocate for protection of the world we live in eventually brought Sarah further West, to Eugene, Oregon, and the Environmental Law program at the University of Oregon School of Law. While studying at the UO, Sarah helped found the Public Interest Public Service program (PIPS), which connects law students with opportunities to serve the Eugene community through service with various nonprofit organizations and cultivates an ethos of community engagement that will hopefully grow with them as they enter the world as new lawyers. She also served on the board of the student group Land Air Water, which organizes the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) and as Articles Editor on the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation (JELL).

After graduating with Certificates in Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Public Interest Law, Sarah joined a small nonprofit organization based in Missoula, Montana as a staff attorney, advocating for better management of motorized recreation and roads on federal public lands. Missoula and Montana were lovely places, but Sarah missed her adoptive home of Eugene, Oregon, and after three years moved back to the Willamette Valley, where she put down roots in Eugene.

Sarah eventually came full circle to her farm girl roots and became Executive Director of a small nonprofit in Salem, Oregon advocating on behalf of small and mid-sized farms in Oregon, before bringing her focus back to a life in Eugene and working for another agricultural focused nonprofit organization, where she eventually supervised a team of seven and helped set program priorities.

After years spent digging into nonprofit management and staff and program development, Sarah realized she missed focusing on the legal aspects of the nonprofit world and is excited to share her decades of experience at all levels of nonprofit organizational development with our clients while serving as Managing Attorney for our firm.

In her off-hours, Sarah spends as much time in the garden and in the woods or on the water as possible. When not out exploring Oregon, Sarah enjoys making meals with friends, preserving the bounty that grows in the Willamette Valley, and hanging out with her eighteen pound retired farm cat.