In later years she was an adviser to U.S. presidents Nixon and Ford as the first woman on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
in biological sciences from Stanford University in 1947, then attended the National Park Service Yosemite Field School.
During the 1950s[vague] Willard was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to study alpine ecology in Europe.
[4] She wrote Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra in 1972 with coauthor-illustrator Ann Zwinger, revising it in 1996.
Willard promoted the establishment of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.