Colleen Haraden

Colleen Haraden is Balance’s Chief Operating Officer and Marketing Director, with more than 35 years of experience in the geosciences, focusing on water resources, environmental, and public works projects. Colleen marries her passion for human connections, water resources, research, and art in her role at Balance. You might find her scrolling through historical images imagining early California, getting to know folks from a local watershed council, mentoring staff, or strategizing with colleagues on how best to address a client’s needs. Throughout her career, she has worked on a broad spectrum of projects across the Western United States and Hawaii, from regional groundwater studies to technically complex projects involving web applications and data portals for public outreach and program management, GIS analysis, and presentation-ready graphics. She supports clients with Emergency Action Plans for dam failure planning, grant strategies and applications, and grant management, including projects funded through Propositions 1, 50, and 84. As COO, Colleen also plays a central role in Balance’s operations, strategic planning, staffing, project management, client service, and mentoring staff as they grow in their careers.

When she is not in the office, Colleen is most likely creating art or plotting her next swim adventure. She swims year-round in San Francisco Bay with the Blue Boobies, from daily local swims to adventures around Angel Island and long hauls in Tomales Bay. Her love of exploring places from the water has taken her much farther afield: swimming among the islands of the Stockholm Archipelago, down Finland’s Oulanka River, around Sicily’s Egadi Islands, in cold mountain lakes in the Alps, and on long, lazy swims through the lakes of Northern Italy. For Colleen, swimming is as much about exploring landscapes, communities, and waterways as it is about the miles.

And unless she’s off on one of those long swims, Colleen spends pretty much 24/7 with her special boy, Theo. They begin each day with a long hike, and Theo heads to the office with her, where he has become part of the Balance family. He’s rarely far from her side.