About Friends of Park County

Ken Cochrane brings extensive legal and nonprofit experience to the Friends of Park County board. An avid fly fisherman looking for the perfect place to settle for retirement,  he bought property in Park County in 2008.

Ken has been involved in community and environmental issues throughout his residence in Park County. Land use, housing, jobs and improving internet services for education and economic development have commanded Ken’s civic attention. In addition to his work as a co-founder and director of Friends of Park County, Ken is a currently a director of the Park County Community Foundation where he also chairs the Grant Committee.

Ken practiced law in California for 48 years, many of them at McCormick Barstow LLP as an AV rated Family Law Specialist and an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Food Science from the University of California, Davis and graduated from the Hastings College of Law at the University of California.

Ken lives with his partner, Jane Conover – a California cattle rancher, on Mill Creek in Paradise Valley.

Thomas Blurock is a Livingston resident and an architect with 50 years of experience in design and planning. He and his wife Kathleen live in a historic building in downtown Livingston which he recently rehabilitated as residential and retail space.  Before moving to town, he had a fishing cabin for thirty years in Tom Miner Basin. An active member of the community, he serves on the City of Livingston Historic Preservation Commission and The Guiding Principal Strategic Planning Committee.

His award-winning firm for 35 years specialized in the design and planning of educational facilities in urban areas. He has been involved in the development of healthy communities for his entire working life. Early in his career, he was involved in a number of downtown revitalization projects in California and along the East Coast. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Kathy Foote is a fourth-generation Montanan, raised on a ranch south of Bozeman. Kathy moved to Park County in 1988, and lives with her husband, Jonathan, on a ranch east of Livingston, where they raise and show award-winning cutting horses. Kathy is a top amateur rider and a past president and director of the Montana cutting Horse Association. She is a past board member of Big Brothers and Sisters of Park County. Kathy is a CASA with the Park County Casa Program, and currently works with the Park County Attorney’s Office. Kathy has seen the significant changes in the Gallatin Valley during her lifetime. She believes that she has insights as to how Park County may avoid some of the negative impact from sprawl and development.

Jen Vermillion grew up on a family farm in the West. She pursued her love of tackling complex grassland restoration issues by earning an MS in Land Reclamation and Rehabilitation from MSU Bozeman. Jen served on the Montana Department of Agriculture’s Noxious Weed Management Advisory Council for six years, was an active board member on the Park County Community Foundation for nine years and is the Secretary/Treasurer for their local canal company. Jen and her husband Pat, a fishing guide, are raising their two daughters on their farm in the Shields Valley, producing hay and high-quality pastured pork. She values a strong community and working to support the success and well-being of everyone within it, including addressing the challenges of rapid development in Park County.

Randy Carpenter has had a career working with community leaders in the Northern Rockies, helping them understand the challenges that come with growth and change, and tailor locally based solutions to those challenges. Randy was a community planner in Iowa, followed by 13 years with the Sonoran Institute’s Northern Rockies Program. Randy served as a Project Director for Future West from 2014 to 2022, which included assisting with the creation of the Gardiner community plan and advising Friends of Park County. Today he is the Executive Director of Headwaters Community Housing Trust.

Robert has almost forty years of experience with the design, implementation, evaluation and politics of land use and transportation plans, at the local, regional and state levels. His advice has been sought from places as different as Bozeman, Montana and Beijing, China.

Robert’s experience in both the public and private world gives him a unique ability to bring people together, speak their language and bridge divides to get tangible results.

Key Past Leadership:

• Founder & Director of the Urban Sustainability Accelerator and Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University
• Smart Growth Consultant and Public Speaker – US and International
• 2-term Councilor at Metro Regional Government
• Senior Counsel to Congressman Earl Blumenauer in the Third District of Oregon
• Executive Director, 1000 Friends of Oregon

Robert is passionate about helping communities translate lofty planning goals and visions into the policies and practices that bring to reality compact, vibrant, sustainable and equitable cities and neighborhoods and the conservation of working farm, ranch and forest lands.

Robert has a JD from Harvard Law School, an MA from Oxford University, a BA from the University of Oregon Honors College and was a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard.

Frank Schroeder is the Past President and a co-founder of Friends of Park County. For 13 years Frank served on the Park County Planning Board, including navigating the drafting and adoption of the County’s most recent Growth Policy.  Frank brings to his advisor role more than 40 years of private sector general management experience in the US and Europe, including providing executive search services in the not for profit and corporate sectors. More recently, Frank founded Campus2Career Transition Services to assist young adults to identify their career direction and land the right job in their chosen field.

Dennis Glick has had a long career in both national and international conservation. He has been involved in conservation and growth management efforts in the Greater Yellowstone Region for over 30 years, most recently as the co-founder and Director of the non-profit Future West. He has authored several publications and has organized many conferences and workshops on growth management and rural conservation topics. A resident of Livingston, Montana for over 30 years, Dennis has been an active participant in many community and county planning issues.

Tom Murphy is a nationally celebrated wildlife photographer based in Livingston. His photography is in private, public, and museum collections around the world. He creates photographs which illustrate his passion for the remaining wild places on our earth. Tom is featured in a PBS Nature film, “Christmas in Yellowstone” which has regularly aired worldwide. He has traveled the United States presenting the wonders of nature through his photographic slide shows. In agreeing to join the Board of Advisor Tom said he wanted to “help to keep this place a wonderful place for wildlife and wild land.”

Sandra Lambert grew up in Kansas City and earning degrees at the University of Missouri, she began a career of college teaching and then being an author’s editor. After moving West, a forest fire destroyed her family’s home and they moved to Jackson Hole, where she taught skiing and kayaking, rode horses, and climbed. She has served on many boards including for Mountain Journal and led the capital campaign for a shelter for abused women and children. She lives in Livingston, when not fishing she monitors meetings of the Park County Commission and Planning Board.