Gov. appoints commissioner to state game board

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has appointed Sharon Salazar Hickey, an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to fill an open seat on the State Game Commission, the state Game and Fish Department announced Thursday.

The seven-member board directs the spending of a $35 million annual budget, creates hunting and fishing regulations and oversees the state Game and Fish Department.

Salazar Hickey is replacing former commission Chairwoman Joanna Prukop, who was not reappointed by the governor when her term expired in December.

Salazar Hickey is a project manager at the Los Alamos lab for the associate laboratory director for environment, safety, health, quality, safeguards and security, according to a news release on her appointment. The lab’s website says her job includes projects centered on nuclear safety, environmental stewardship and endangered species preservation.

She was raised in Los Alamos and is an avid hiker, biker and snowshoer, the release said.

She previously has been appointed to state boards, serving on the New Mexico State Governor’s Fellows Program Board in 2007 and the New Mexico Youth

Conservation Corps Commission for the past six years.

According to her résumé, Salazar Hickey received a bachelor’s degree from Wilson College in Pennsylvania and a law degree from California Western School of Law in San Diego. She’s a member of the New Mexico State Bar Association and previously worked as a staff attorney in the lab’s Office of Laboratory Counsel and as a group leader in the Human Resources Division.