About
Experience and Credentials
- Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from Antioch University New England
- Certificates in land use mediation, narrative mediation, and community dialogue
- Past Director of Green Chimneys School Farm Program in Brewster, NY
- Past Executive Director of The Pratt Center, a nature center in New Milford, CT
- Vice Chair of New Milford, CT Inland Wetlands Commission
- Advisor to The Nature Conservancy’s Sunny Valley Preserve in New Milford, CT
My interest in land use began in central Ohio, where my family owned a large construction company. I gained excellent map reading skills from watching my dad pore over blueprints spread out on our dining room table. On weekends my mom and dad taught me to fish along the wild edges of Indian Lake, where we shared a family cottage.
I decided to pursue my love of nature in college and beyond, became a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) graduate and earned a Master of Science degree in Natural Resources from the Ohio State University. After moving to the east coast, I became an outdoor teacher, director of a therapeutic farm program in New York, and Executive Director of a nature center in western Connecticut. Over the next twenty-five years I developed land-based environmental education programs including a large community garden and farm animal-raising project.
As time went by I saw many changes in land use around the nature center. Housing developments sprang up in farm fields, new roads cut through forested land, and deltas of sediment spread into local rivers. In 1988 the State of Connecticut required my town to create an Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission to review applications for wetland impacts and grant permits for land development. I was appointed as one of the original members and currently serve as Vice Chair.
Growing up in a nature-loving, land development family helped me navigate the opposing points of view I would later encounter as both a nature center director and land use regulator. I move easily between different groups, working with the diverse perspectives of developers and conservationists, engineers and ecologists, children and adults. I became interested in land use facilitation and mediation from watching the ways in which people deal with conflict and struggle to communicate.
In 2008 I completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies that focused on land use decision-makers and their connection with nature. The research honed my interview skills and taught me a great deal more about listening and letting go of assumptions and stereotypes. Along the way I also earned certificates in narrative mediation from the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Conrad Grebel University College, land use dispute mediation from The Consensus Building Institute and Lincoln Land Institute, and community dialogue from the Public Conversations Project.
Currently, in addition to my professional commitments, I am active in the New Milford Rotary Club, serving as past president, team leader for a Rotary International Group Study Exchange to Korea, and counselor to a Brazilian high school exchange student. I am a past chair and member of The Nature Conservancy’s Sunny Valley Preserve Advisory Committee. This preserve is home to six farms, and miles of hiking trails. I am Trustee and Treasurer for the Housatonic Friends (Quaker) Meeting where I continue to learn about consensus building, discernment, and how to determine the “sense of the meeting.” I am a member of the Mad Gardener’s Invasive Species Advisory Committee, working with the Chair to raise funds for college interns involved in the Mile-a-Minute Vine Control Project.