Meet the Maven of EOV Mission Control at UVE
By Abbey Kingdon
There is a side of the EOV program at UVE that people rarely see but can feel its impact. EOV Monitors and Hub Verifiers are in the field, working with stewards, meeting to walk the land and interpret data, but all of that is possible because of UVE’s “mission control.”
Mackay Gibbs, who leads the EOV program at UVE, is mission control. She prefers to be behind the scenes, ensuring everything runs smoothly and that monitors have what they need to do their field work.
Mackay in her happy place with goats at Sienna Ranch in Lafayette, CA 2023
Mackay with family in front of Manifesto Bicycles, Oakland 2019
“She is in many ways, the grounding force of UVE,” said Andrea Malmberg, Director of UVE. Mackay is known for switching seamlessly from a therapy-informed conversation to troubleshooting monitoring technology. Her capacity for both counseling and delivering ecological data has shown to be a powerful combination in the service of supporting land stewards.
As EOV went through a big disturbance in 2024, UVE took that opportunity to listen closely to land stewards, monitors, and verifiers. What we heard and learned informed what EOV is today at UVE. Mackay’s role continues to evolve and is deeply informed by the people we work with, and serve. What they want is simple: clear agreements, schedules, and data delivered reliably on time.
Mackay believes that success and efficiency “in the front of the business,” is supported by well-designed back-end systems. At UVE, Mackay develops and improves systems, including the adoption of a technology used by our sister Hub in the UK, 3LM. This technology has improved efficiencies in the collection of data and the delivery of timely reports to land stewards. Mackay also organizes UVE’s monitoring schedules across the West Coast (and beyond) and provides real-time support to our monitors during monitoring events.
If her career accomplishments and degrees indicate anything, it is that she has a love of learning, continuous improvement, creating efficient systems, running businesses, and most importantly, committing to having a positive impact on the world. Mackay’s background is in operations, she has an MBA, owned a bike shop for 11 years in Oakland, CA with her husband, moved her family to the northern coast of California to be closer to nature, and near completion of a degree in marriage and family therapy, while improving the systems behind UVE’s EOV program. In the future, she dreams of stewarding a landbase where humans can increase their connections with each other and with the natural world. Mackay and her husband have two children and are active in the local community, including their children’s schools and grassroots organizations.
Mackay with kids in Humboldt County, CA 2020
Mackay as Director of Manufacturing with her daughter
“Mackay directs a lot of complicated traffic,” said UVE Hub Verifier, Dora Cohen, “She keeps track of data collected from nearly 60 different land bases that are at different stages of the EOV process, with different monitoring schedules, and that are geographically spread out across diverse ecoregions. Mackay somehow pulls everyone together and makes EOV happen as smoothly as it does. She’s my ‘EOV Fairy Godmother’ as the other half of our EOV team.”
Mackay with EOV Monitoring cohort in 2022 at White Buffalo Land Trust
Abbey Kingdon is Savory Professional Educator and an owner of UVE