TERRAXPLORATIONS, INC. 

Sharlene K. O’Donnell has twenty years of experience working and volunteering in environmental and cultural conservation settings in the Southeastern United States. She has worked and volunteered in office, laboratory, field, archival, museum, public education, and classroom settings for academia, cultural resource management, government entities, and not-for-profit organizations. She received her B.A. in Anthropology focusing on experimental archaeology from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, an M.A. in Anthropology concentrating on Zooarchaeology from the University of Florida, and an M.A. in History with a concentration on Environmental History and Cherokee Studies, along with a Full Grant Life-Cycle Management Certificate, from Western Carolina University.

Ms. O’Donnell currently serves as an environmental archaeologist/historian and Public Sector Proposal Coordinator for TerraX. Most of Ms. O’Donnell’s career as an archaeologist has consisted of working on the Gulf coast of Florida studying the content of Native American shell middens to ascertain subsistence and lifeways of people in the past. In western North Carolina, Ms. O’Donnell has conducted research to understand historically and presently how certain species of plants and animals are managed and conserved by the National Park Service, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and by local not-for-profit organizations. Working for TerraX, Ms. O’Donnell has written and directed technical report writing for Phase I, II, and III investigations in all of the states in the Southeast. She also develops environmental histories for mitigation reports, reconstructing the environmental past from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene. 

As the Public Sector Proposals Coordinator, Ms. O’Donnell oversees marketing searches and develops proposals for municipal, state, federal, and tribal solicited Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and, when necessary, coordinates strategic teaming relationships with partner firms to best fulfill RFP requirements. Ms. O’Donnell directs staff members and works in teams to write/draft proposals tailored to each solicitation; additionally, she provides training to staff members on how to find and interpret RFPs. Ms. O’Donnell has produced winning proposals for multi-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts with entities such as the Alabama and North Carolina Departments of Transportation, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and United States Forest Service (USFS), as well as numerous projects as a subgrantee for municipalities that have National Park Service (NPS) grant funding. She is familiar with federal requirements of Native American Graves Protection And Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Section 106 and 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), Protection of Archaeological Resources (43 CFR Part 7), Procedures for State, Tribal, and Local Government Historic Preservation Programs (36 CFR Part 61), Protection of Historic Properties (36 CFR Part 800), and Curation of Federally Owned or Administered Archaeological Collections (36 CFR Part 79).