When President Barack Obama nominated Sally Jewell as secretary of interior last week, he chose a woman not unlike him: smart, low-key and with a self-deprecating wit.
In a 2011 speech at the University of Denver, Jewell quoted Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" to argue that Americans have avoided the more-difficult road "less traveled by" that assures the Earth's preservation. She underlined that point by showing a slide of a glacier from her recent jaunt to South America and Antarctica, acknowledging ruefully, "Our carbon footprint was dreadful."
Jewell, chief executive of Kent, Wash.-based retailer REI, also took a less-traveled road to the Cabinet nomination. She is not known as a top political fundraiser and never ran for office. But she long has hobnobbed in Seattle power circles and is a regular donor to Democratic politicians, including Obama.
Her work with influential conservation groups and other causes, along with a broad business background, caught Obama's eye during his first term. People close to Jewell believe Obama considered her for the Interior Department job four years ago.
Later, in 2009, he invited Jewell to the White House to discuss health care reform.
As CEO of REI, Jewell oversees a $2 billion company with nearly 130 stores in 31 states and 11,000 employees.
"The fact that she's from the private sector was a major consideration for the administration," said Costco co-founder and Chairman Jeff Brotman, who served more than a decade with Jewell on the University of Washington Board of Regents and recently participated in the White House's vetting of her. "They've been criticized roundly for not having enough people from the business sector, and they can check off that box with Sally."
Brotman noted that Jewell has been to his Medina home for campaign fundraisers twice since 2008, giving her the chance to meet both Barack and Michelle Obama.
If the Senate confirms her, Jewell will take over an organization that's one of the government's biggest sources of revenue other than taxes. In 2011, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management brought in $7 billion from leasing rights for oil, gas, coal and minerals, and recreation fees.
Jewell, who has mostly avoided controversy throughout her career, also will face the dueling demands of protecting public lands while tapping the wealth buried beneath.
That tension reared its head Thursday, when Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski called Jewell to say she would hold up the nomination unless the Interior Department approves a 20-mile road across the remote Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska's Aleutian Peninsula.
Tom Kiernan, president of the National Parks and Conservation Association in Washington, D.C., said Jewell won't be easily cowed by political pressure.
"Sally is strong, smart and wonderfully assertive," said Kiernan, who helped recruit Jewell to his board eight years ago.
Jewell, 56, was born in England as Sally Roffey and moved to Seattle four years later when her father, an anesthesiologist, took a fellowship at the University of Washington.
"He thought of nature as a wonderful laboratory," Jewell recalled to The New York Times in 2007. "So when I was 9, my parents started sending me on educational camping trips."
She graduated from Renton High School in 1973. And in 1978, she received a degree in mechanical engineering from the UW along with her soon-to-be husband, Warren. They both moved to Oklahoma and took jobs with Mobil Oil.
