Biography

Donna Sandstrom is the Founder and Executive Director of The Whale Trail, a west coast-wide series of sites to watch whales from shore. In 2002 she was a community organizer on the successful effort to return Springer, an orphaned orca, to her pod.

Donna recently served as a member of Gov. Jay Inslee's Orca Recovery Task Force, and as a member of WDFW's ORCA Advisory Group. Prior to founding The Whale Trail, she was a team and project manager at Adobe Systems.

Donna was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in southern California. She attended UC Santa Cruz from 1974 to 1979, where she studied psychobiology.

She lives in West Seattle on the edge of Puget Sound. She loves to garden, and play the guitar, and sing old Beatle songs at the top of her lungs. When southern residents are near, she brings binoculars to the shore and helps people see them.

Donna has been writing her whole life. Her Op Eds have appeared in Crosscut and the Seattle Times. Orca Rescue! is her first book.

Professional Affiliations

Member, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators

Selected Writing

How we can honor the orca Tahlequah’s grief (Seattle Times Op Ed, 1/24/2025)
Lessons for Lolita from the orca reunion of Springer (Seattle Times Op Ed, 4/16/2023)
Cut the Toxins and Boat Noise, and Boost Salmon, so Orcas Can Survive (Seattle Times, 8/18/2018)
To Help Save Orcas, Pause Whale-Watching (co-authored with Dr. Tim Ragen, Crosscut, 11/23/2020 )