Recent leadership team members bring a variety of career experiences to the table. To name a few: reporter, federal engineer, donkey rescuer, defense IT expert, architectural historian, chiropractor, neuroscience researcher, midwife, geologist, petrochemical specialist, academic administrator, health services administrator, K-to-12 teacher, OB/GYN doc, college professor, fundraiser, rocket scientist (really!). Also: mom, dad, grandpop, grandma, loving aunties, home anchor, family icon, and so on!
FATHER-DAUGHTER FIELD DAYS
Ben and his teenage daughter Liza Ann enthusiastically shared the evening class together in 2025, with flawless attendance and wholehearted participation in everything on offer. While Liza Ann negotiated high school and late nights, Ben worked as a senior environmental project manager, recently helping to improve over 100 watershed plans from 30+ states and to evaluate regional and international environmental programs. They were a joy to behold.
LEGACIES IN THE LANDSCAPES
Landscape architects Chris Porter ’25 and Bradley Odom ’19 connect to the legacy of earlier RMN participants, currently working for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects that Warren Byrd and Sue Nelson RMN ’18 founded in 1985.NBW earned international recognition and numerous awards with projects on five continents (including the Shanksville 9/11 memorial). Warren, professor emeritus of landscape architecture at UVA, explained the firm’s reclamation of The Dell, Jefferson’s neglected meadowland and creek, to many RMNs. It’s a veritable showcase of hydraulic recapture, avian migration, and local native plants. Chris Porter RMN Class of ‘25 completed UVA degrees in landscape architecture and environmental science, and worked on farms here and abroad as well as mine reclamations on southwestern Navajo lands. Brad Odom ’19 completed his studies at LSU and surveyed the World War I American Cemetery in Flanders, recently working on the new Machicomoco State Park in Gloucester County. Brad even found time to design the 2023 RMN T-shirt while keeping up his hours with the RMN, the Piedmont Bird Club, and the Virginia Native Plant Society.
KEEPING THOSE DANG INVASIVES DOWN
While laboring to root out Asiatic bittersweet on their property, Rod and Maggie Walker ’18 learned about Cooperative Weed Management Areas, and started the first Virginia CWMA in 2014. This morphed into PRISM: Blue Ridge Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management— a fount of RMN volunteer opportunities and trainees, like Rowena Zimmermann ’24 (Director, Communications and Outreach), Tom Saielli ’23 (who came from the American Chestnut Foundation and moved on to The American Battlefield Trust), Tom’s wife Karen in ’24, William Hamersky ‘16 (diehard volunteer, lifelong naturalist), and original RMN organizers Ruth Douglas ’06 and Mary Lee Epps ’06, who have contributed steadily as educators to the Virginia Native Plant Society and so many other vital environmental initiatives.
PIVOTING FOR PURPOSE
Dr. Nalini Ayya ’22 retired from research and innovation within the consumer goods industry after overseeing scientific experimentation at Dannon, Mondelez International and Proctor & Gamble. She currently serves on the Board of the Rivanna Conservation Alliance, a nonprofit watershed organization focused on cleaning and protecting the Rivanna River and its tributaries.She volunteers for several organizations, such as American Partners in Climate (formerly Rural Resilience) and also contributes to RMN’s Outreach and Education committee during public events.
WATERY IMPERATIVES
Dr. Lisa Wittenborn ‘18 took on the directorship of the Rivanna Conservation Alliance in 2017 after working in watershed protection, public policy in DC, and environmental education. She contributes regularly to RMN lectures about RCA’s local initiatives, such as the reclamation of Riverview Park. After Australian-born Claire Sanderson ’21 took the class, which features RCA projects, she took an RCA position as manager of RCA’s highly effective water quality monitoring program, which trains dozens of RMN volunteers to identify the health of our water supply through lab and field work.
LAW AND OYSTERS
Legal eagles Ralph Henry and Kate Levy ‘21 took the class together in the midst of busy careers. One of their favorite volunteer activities is getting out on the water to support oyster repopulation campaigns. This sometimes involves driving around town with buckets of discarded shells from various local eateries. Ralph directs litigation at the Humane Society, focusing on wildlife protection and defending new animal protection legislation against constitutional law challenges, while teaching law at Georgetown and George Mason universities. Ralph somehow finds time to assist the Curriculum Committee and helps new students navigate the Better Impact timekeeping system.
BUDDIES
What do an equine veterinarian, a survival and tracking expert, and a former Top Gun/ PR-firm executive have in common? They met through the RMN. These three avid fishermen and hunters bonded during the training class and still enjoy outings together. Steve Pullinger ’15, Mark Foley ‘19, and Dave Volin ‘19 also pitch in with Outreach, class organization, and continuing ed. Steve helped establish Scheier Natural Area and assists with Forest School classes organized by his wife Deborah Andersen ‘17. Tex Weaver ’09 (Forestry) and Mark have spent hours shoring up the Fernbrook Natural Area, a little niche of old forest growth off Stoney Point Road. The guys assembled a panel in 2024 to explain how hunting contributes positively to conservation…and lived to tell!
COMBATING NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER
Well-established as a trauma therapist, EMDR network coordinator, and inaugural director of The Women’s Initiative, Carolyn Schuyler LCSW ’16 realized her vision to create a natural space for therapeutic nature playing in 2017 when she opened Wildrock, at the foot of the Shenandoah National Park. Since then, Wildrock has sent staff members to RMN’s training class to top up their regional nature knowledge.
THE QUARRY IS THE LAND
After a hectic career running a PR firm in Baltimore, Armand and Bernice Thieblot found their paradise on 400± acres that featured several abandoned soapstone quarries in Schuyler, Nelson County. They enlisted Devin and Rachel Floyd ’06 from the Center for Urban Habitats and Natural Heritage to reclaim the property’s natural profile, drawing in dozens of RMN volunteers to oversee bioblitzes, invasive pulls, plant refurbishment, trail-building, and land reconditioning. RMN field trips at Quarry Gardens study real-time reclamation, native plants, caterpillars, mushrooms, butterflies, birds, and local geology. Governor McAuliffe designated the 190-acre park set aside as Quarry Gardens a Virginia Treasure in 2016, now under Devin and Rachel’s directorship.
STELLAR INVOLVEMENT
Almost half the graduates from the RMN Class of 2016 became chapter leaders or community contributors: bravos to Dr. Rob Finley (RMN President, geology instructor), Sandy Finley (Curriculum Chair 2017-2021), Carol Long (Curriculum Chair 2021-2024), Joanna Hickman (Newsletter and Web Communications 2017 on), Jane Erwine (Diversity Working Group chair), Leigh Surdukowski (bird walk guide, pollinator garden overseer at Ivy Creek), Eileen DeCamp (Leadership Team Recorder), Janelle Catlett (Continuing Education Co-Chair), Fern Campbell (Outreach advisor), Bill Buchholz (Curriculum Field Trips Coordinator), and Tom Wild (Tree Stewards instructor, ICNA board member).
MAKING A PLACE AMAZING
After retiring as a federal manager in DC, Walter Hussey ‘14 devoted himself to planning, mapping and implementing the Meadow Management Program at Pleasant Grove Park in Fluvanna County. He collaborated with six state agencies, won grants, and co-planned events that brought thousands of school kids and community members closer to nature, all of which earned him a Governor’s Award for Volunteer of the Year in 2016. Walter’s team of cohorts at Pleasant Grove eventually transformed 100 acres of parkland into a demonstration classroom, including bobwhite quail habitats, native plant and wildflower gardens, wildlife diversity models, pollinator nurseries, and an awesome butterfly garden.
ENDURING FASCINATION
As a young man teaching in New England, John Holden ‘09 became a hardcore winter mountaineering guide in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He continued to hone his encyclopedic knowledge and passion for all things natural during a career with Eastern Mountain Sports and Blue Ridge Mountain Sports. John has guided hundreds of groups on fact-packed field trips to out of the way places, and annually treating RMN folks to marvelous venues like New River Gorge (for rare and exotic wildflowers and ferns), Maple Flats (for salamanders, wood frog eggs and lady slippers), Big Meadows (for the NABA Annual Butterfly Count), various kayaking venues, and other extraordinary places, all immortalized with his wife Jeannie’s amazing photography. John often shares their explorations of lesser known places of wild beauty in his “Destinations” articles for the RMN newsletter.
FLORAL ACCOLADES
Lara Call Gastinger ’13 is an award-winning botanical illustrator with dozens of exhibits and two gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society to her credit. As the Chief Illustrator for the updated Flora of Virginia publication (2012), Lara provided 1000± drawings, speaks widely and locally, and oversees regular workshops about keeping plant journals.
R&R: RESCUE AND RECREATION
Linda Birch ‘12 regularly gets up at 4:00am to start her work day at Shenandoah National Park as a pesticide technician, now in her eighth season, caring for the suffering ash and hemlocks, releasing predatory biologic insects, and tending to native plant gardens at the park entrances. After working as a nurse practitioner at UVA, teaching aquatic fitness classes and volunteering for the Wildlife Center of Virginia, she still has time to enjoy backcountry hiking, sea kayaking, and attending the RMN’s scintillating continuing education talks.
For everyone not featured here…out of more than 500 folks who have trained in our chapter: none of this works without YOU. Thank you for every effort, every attentive moment, every minute you give to nature for the RMN.