Volcan Mountain Foundation

Familiar volunteer brings science background to new VMF position

February 2026

A familiar face has joined Volcan Mountain Foundation in a newly-created staff position.

Layla Khazeni joined the staff in January as Program Coordinator. In that role, she’s the face of several of the programs that define the organization: Conservation, Stewardship and Education.

Khazeni, 24 and a resident of San Diego, has volunteered for Volcan Mountain Foundation since 2024.

“It’s pretty all-encompassing,” Board Member and Past President Greg Schuett said of the Program Coordinator position. “We’re asking her to do more.”

Khazeni’s hire is part of shuffle triggered, in part, by a transition of Education Coordinator Janice Smith into a new role that focuses on adult education classes.

Earlier, as Schuett and some staff members discussed who should fill the Program Coordinator job, “All three of us came up with the same name,” he said.

“As we explored her background—a master’s in science from overseas (University College London), an environmental degree (University of Chicago), and her experience as a volunteer with various research projects (including one in Indonesia)—it was made to order,” Schuett said.

Then there’s Khazeni’s enthusiasm for what she describes as “the wonder of ecological complexity––a fascination with how climate systems, environments, and species exist in relation to one another.”

She’s bringing that enthusiasm to her first big assignment: analyzing remotely sensed data to inform the reforestation of the montane forest, where chaparral and oak ecosystems give way to conifers.  Volcan Mountain Foundation is about halfway into a three-year program to restore 165 acres. The $2.1 million project is funded in large part by the Wildlife Conservation Board.

At upper elevations, the work has involved removing great masses of deadfall and brittle vegetation—known as “ladder fuels” to the fire service—that crowd taller conifers.

At a desktop strewn with satellite, LIDAR and topographic images, Khazeni frames the architecture to rebuild the forest.

Seasonal fluctuations of hydroclimate, the topic of Khazeni’s dissertation, play heavily into a growing strategy focused on the relationship between trees, water, people, and place.

Out in the trees, recent brush clearing has made the slopes well-accessible for planting and minimized competition for seedlings. The first delivery of seedlings is expected soon.

“We are coordinating with experts to train our team in planting techniques that optimize for survival,” Khazeni said. “A lot of restoration work focuses on tree planting. We want it to be about tree growing.”

To support that growth, Khazeni has drafted a schema for continued monitoring of the trees once they’re in the ground.

While the demands of the job have focused Khazeni’s attention on the restoration, she looks forward to inheriting the outdoor education program, to shadowing the Education Coordinator, to studying curricula and education plans and to updating the website to best represent the breadth of VMF’s learning opportunities.

“What excites me about the educational program is the playfulness of our approach. There’s a joy in each session that fosters hope and connection, and can inspire a lasting commitment to stewardship on and off the mountain.”

Those opportunities include local school visits for elementary students to visit the mountain two times per year for grade-specific sessions of outdoor education.

“The kids are going to love her,” said Schuett, a career educator and former principal at Cuyamaca Outdoor School. “She’s got the kind of personality the kids are going to really be attracted to. The teachers, too. She just exudes the passion for the kinds of things we’re trying to get kids excited about.”

Where else do Khazeni’s passions lie?

On the “analog” pages of field journals she fills with observations and illustrations. One of her degrees from University of Chicago is in nonfiction creative writing. The other, in global studies, focused on environmental and global health.

“I always have a pen and paper,” she said.

She surfs. Explores tidepools. Plays tennis. Dabbles in painting and mixed media.

An admitted bookworm, Khazeni’s shelf is piled with volumes from Rachel Carson, Timothy Morton, Donna Harraway and Ursula K. LeGuin.

She loves Indonesia, where through the years she has made multiple trips to advance access to clean water and prevent malaria with the Sumba Foundation.

One day she hopes to visit Iran, the country of her father’s birth, to meet relatives, take in the country’s rich art and culture and to meet the Pallas's cat—with its thick fur and grumpy facial expression—in its native environs.

For now, however, the wooded slopes of Volcan Mountain are a very happy place.

“The motto ‘Keeping it Wild’ expresses a unique aspect of Volcan Mountain Foundation’s conservation strategy,” Khazeni said. “It rejects this outdated idea that wilderness means human exclusion, a paradigm that’s naïve to where we are today. Our present ecological reality of human impact demands attentive, adaptive response. VMF represents a more honest understanding of what wilderness really means: highly-connected and actively-stewarded habitat.”