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Joni Bosh

Phoeniz, Arizona
Treasurer
Board of Directors

Joni Bosh’s family moved to Phoenix from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when she was a senior in high school. 'I still think of myself as a Midwesterner,' she says. 'You could live here your whole life except your first 17 years and people still won’t consider you a real Arizonan.'

Bosh first joined the Sierra Club in the early 1970s as a college student in Flagstaff. 'The chapter was brand new in those days. I was a river rafter, and the Grand Canyon fights over damming the Colorado River were really what got me involved.'

Bosh recalls a Club meeting in Phoenix in the 1970s where Dave Foreman, then a field rep for the Wilderness Society and later a founder of Earth First!, gave a talk. 'There were about eight guys there, and me. Dave was really enthusiastic and everyone just listened quietly, and when he was done they said, ‘OK, Dave, good to see you,’ and left. So Dave says to me, ‘Let’s go get a beer,’ and he basically got me excited about doing wilderness work.' Bosh went on to play a key role in forming the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, which proposed and successfully lobbied for national forest and BLM wilderness bills in the 1980s.

A 3-time cancer survivor, Bosh has worked extensively with Breast Cancer Action. 'You learn a lot going through something like this,' she says. 'You get a warning and you realize, ‘I’ve got all this time, I want to make the most of it.’'

Her enthusiasm is palpable when she recounts a recent hiking trip in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. 'We did 20-mile days with my kids less than six week after my surgery!'

Published: June 19, 2007