Board of Trustees

President Jimmy Carter
Honorary Chair, Atlanta, GA

ACF Board of Trustees, May 2010. Photo courtesy of William Stortz.

Nancy Lord
Chair

Nancy has been on ACF’s board since 2005. Originally from New Hampshire, she moved to Homer, Alaska in 1973 and has made her home there with partner Ken Castner. She was a founding member of the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society (1974) and the Alaska Marine Conservation Society (1992); she is past chair of both organizations as well as of the Alaska Environmental Lobby. In 1994 she was awarded ACF’s Celia Hunter Award for her environmental volunteerism. She is the author of both fiction and nonfiction books, including Fishcamp, Green Alaska, and Beluga Days, and has written for magazines, newspapers, and the NPR radio show Living on Earth. She fished commercially for salmon for 25 years, and worked as a legislative aide in Juneau, mainly on resource issues, for 8 years. Her education is in American studies (Hampshire College) and creative writing (Vermont College), and she has taught creative writing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In recent summers, she has been working on small adventure cruise ships in Alaska as a historian, naturalist, and Zodiac driver and is finally becoming acquainted with the extraordinary landscapes and wildlife of places like Glacier Bay and the Pribilof Islands. Among her favorite activities are beachcombing and berry picking.

Marcia I. Lamb
National Vice-Chair

Marcia has over thirty years of senior leadership roles in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Most recently she served as executive vice president of the National Park Foundation, reporting to the President and leading all of their development efforts. She currently serves as a consultant to the Foundation and worked the past year on a national leadership summit on the future of park philanthropy and partnerships. She previously served as co-executive director of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a national nonprofit founded by Professor Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School, working to eliminate economic inequality in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement. Before joining ICIC, Ms. Lamb was manager of administration for Fleet Investment Advisors, the investment management business line of the Fleet Financial Group. From 1985 until 1991, she served as assistant secretary of housing for Massachusetts, where she managed most of the states publicly and privately financed housing programs. She lives in Talkeetna, Alaska; Stillwater, Minnesota; and Dunedin, Florida with her husband and has three grown children who live in each of these three communities. She is an avid outdoor enthusiast who enjoys hiking, kayaking, and camping. In Alaska, she works to support the Denali Arts Council, serving Talkeetna and the Upper Susitna Valley, and Classroom with a View, an Alaska nonprofit helping home-schooled Alaskan youth develop leadership skills and self-esteem through a curriculum-based experiential educational program with trips in Alaska and Mexico.

David Hardenbergh
Treasurer

David has worked in nonprofit administration, environmental program management, and rural community development for twenty years. As executive director of the Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL CAP), David serves as CEO of a $25 million-per-year nonprofit corporation with more than 350 employees statewide, a 24-member board of directors, a for-profit subsidiary, and a separate private foundation. His education includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a three-year stint in Peace Corps Nepal, a master’s degree in intercultural administration, twenty years of marriage, and ten years of parenthood. He is an avid traveler, photographer, hiker, climber, diver, kayaker, skier and investor.

Ruth D. Wood
Secretary

Ruth grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and has fond memories of swimming in muddy-bottomed, water moccasin- and snapping turtle-filled ponds on the family farm where she spent most weekends of her youth. Always liking the sensation of jumping into untested waters, Ruth tried her hand at several professions from managing the government bond portfolio at First Tennessee Bank, to earning an MBA at the University of Chicago, to working as a marketing consultant in Chicago. She first came to Alaska in the summer of 1989 when her sister signed her up for a Colorado Outward Bound class in the Brooks Range. She loved every rainy minute and returned the next summer to work at the Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE). She volunteered for several years, working mostly on local trail and land use issues. She then served on the ACE board of directors, including one term as president. Ruth is a recreational musher and represented local musher’s and the South Birchwood community on the Eagle River Parks and Recreation Board. In 1998, Ruth and her husband, John Strasenburgh, moved to Talkeetna along with their 33 dogs. Ruth was appointed to the Talkeetna Community Council in 2001, and reelected for three additional terms. She has served as chair for the last five years. Intermixed in all of her volunteer work, Ruth (and John, of course) has found time to train and mush her team of dogs on the 800-mile Serum Run from Nenana to Nome, take hiking and river trips to the Brooks Range, and visit their remote log cabins. Ruth feels that Talkeetna is a wonderful rural community that has a very strong bond with the wilderness and natural values of its surrounding lands. Working to retain these characteristics in a booming town, in a booming Matanuska-Susitna Borough, is a significant challenge that occupies much of the time that she would rather spend mushing, hiking, backpacking, boating, birding, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing.

Kerry Anderson

Since its inception in 1985, Kerry has been a Trustee for the True North Foundation. She is the Program Officer for three major environmental programs for the foundation. In addition to a sustainable agriculture program and a mining reform program, Kerry manages a major program area supporting the environmental work of Alaska’s conservation and grassroots organizations. Since 2001, Kerry has been on the Board of a Washington DC based non profit organization, Earthworks, and for the last two years has been the Board’s Co-Chair. In addition to her foundation work, Kerry is interested in hiking, raising alpacas with her husband and the fiber arts. She lives on a ranch in Grass Valley, California.

Rhonda L. Bennon

Rhonda joined ACF as a San Francisco Bay Area Council member in 2004. She is a long-time resident of San Francisco, California, and a native of Chicago, Illinois, who did not set foot in Alaska until 1993. But when she did, it was love at first sight. Before even leaving the airport, she knew she was somewhere special, powerful, and important. Rhonda’s enthusiasm, affection, and respect for Alaska have continued to grow, and on each of her visits to Alaska, she has made it a point to see a new part of the state. Each visit has reinforced her conviction that conservation, in the broadest sense, is essential to Alaska’s—and the rest of the countries—future. Rhonda is a principal and vice-president of The Empire Group, a commercial real estate investment company that specializes in adaptive reuse of historically significant buildings, primarily in San Francisco. She holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, a M.A. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley – Boalt Hall School of Law. Rhonda currently serves on the boards of The Mount Holyoke Club of Northern California and Mickaboo Bird Rescue. She enjoys reading, movies, hiking, and learning. Rhonda lives with her husband, Martin E. Brown, a fellow Alaska enthusiast.

James D. DeWitt

Jim joined the ACF board in 2008. He grew up in Fairbanks and has practiced law in Alaska since graduating in 1975 from Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, Illinois. Jim has worked as an attorney in private practice since 1986 with the Law Offices of Guess & Rudd P.C. He is the author of the Volunteer Legal Handbook through eight editions and for fifteen years chaired the faculty of the Biennial Nonprofit Law courses sponsored by the Alaska Bar Association. He has been a member of the board of directors of United Way of the Tanana Valley for more than twenty years, and was its president in 1993. He is an avid birder and bird photographer. His environmental concerns focus on avian conservation. His other hobbies include fly-fishing, cross-country skiing, hiking, writing, and web site design. Jim is married to environmental consultant Nancy DeWitt, the former executive director of the Alaska Bird Observatory.

Cliff Eames
At large

Cliff joined the ACF board in February 2007. He retired in 2004 after 20 years as Issues Director with the Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE). During that time, his work focused primarily on Alaska’s 104 million acres of state lands and on the protection and restoration of the natural environment on all public lands. Prior to his career at ACE, Cliff served as counsel for the National Wildlife Federation’s Anchorage office and VISTA staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska. He holds a law degree from Boalt Hall at the University of California-Berkeley, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He has served on numerous boards, including the Copper Country Alliance, Alaska Quiet Rights Coalition (founding board member), the Anchorage Waterways Council, and Friends of Chugach State Park. He has also spent many years on advisory committees such as the Governor’s South Denali Task Force, the Chugach National Forest Spruce Bark Beetle Working Group, and the Mayor’s Anchorage Wetlands Management Task Force. A recipient of the Anchorage Audubon Society’s Alaska Conservationist Award and ACF’s Olaus Murie Award, Cliff currently lives in Kenny Lake, Alaska. He enjoys hiking, cross country skiing, kayaking, bird watching, and—recently—studying folk guitar.

Andrea Grant

Has been a pioneering force in the marketing and branding of the natural health and green products industries, as well developing large-scale public awareness campaigns for environmental issues and other socially sensitive topics. AJ’s expertise includes strategic planning, branding and the practical application of communications, especially on environmental matters. She has guided companies and governments in the integration of environmental awareness and action into their value systems and policies, provided risk and crisis communications, and public outreach and media relations for clients. She also has written highly acclaimed curriculums on environmentally related topics for high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. Currently, AJ is president of the BIG GREEN COMPANY, INC. She believes strongly in the powerful opportunity to positively influence today’s youth through multimedia entertainment and education. BIG GREEN COMPANY is a lifestyle brand that represents all that is wholesome and healthy in a fun entertaining way. It’s geared towards the 3 to 6-year-old demographic. The brand’s goal is to reduce childhood obesity and reflect a new healthy green world. To date no one has captured this niche. The engine of the brand is the TV show, BIG GREEN RABBIT – fast forward Barney 40 years, add in Calvin and Hobbes, a twist of green consciousness, a focus on healthy lifestyles, thoughtful eating, and a connection to nature. AJ has served on the board of National Outdoor Leadership School, Western Resource Advocates, and the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado.

Carol Kasza

Carol joined the ACF board in 2003 and lives in Fairbanks. She grew up on the front range of Colorado, where she acquired her affinity for open spaces and sweeping vistas. She received a B.S. in psychology from Colorado State University and an M.A. in community psychology from UAF in 1997. She chose rock climbing, traveling, and working construction over going to law school after college, then worked as a mountaineering instructor for Colorado Outward Bound before being enticed to Alaska by her husband-to-be, Jim Campbell. Since 1979 Carol and Jim have owned and operated Arctic Treks, an award-winning wilderness guiding business leading backpacking, rafting, and basecamp/hiking trips in the Brooks Range—the arctic version of her Colorado homeland. Their two children, Kendra (23) and Kyle (19), grew up with the family business. Carol has served on many public land management advisory boards. She was a founding board member and past president of the Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association, formed to provide a collective voice for wilderness-dependent businesses to advocate for the sustainability of Alaska’s natural and cultural resources, responsible tourism, and tourism planning for communities.

William C. Leighty

Bill is the principal in Alaska Applied Sciences, Inc., a research and development firm in wind generation and science education, and owns a 14-turbine, 700 kW wind plant in Palm Springs, California. He is co-author of twelve papers exploring transmission and energy storage alternatives for diverse, large-scale, stranded renewable energy resources, especially as gaseous hydrogen via pipeline. Bill holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University. He is a director in the Leighty Foundation, www.leightyfoundation.org, a small, charitable, family foundation founded by his father in 1985, in their hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. Bill lives in Juneau, where he has served on the organizing committee of the Juneau Planetarium, the Juneau Sustainable Community Roundtable, the Juneau Energy Advisory Committee, and the Juneau World Affairs Council. He is the former owner of the Gold Creek Salmon Bake.

James Liszka
At large

Jim became an ACF trustee in September 2006. He has been an integral member of the faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage for 25 years. An internationally recognized scholar in semiotics (the theory of signs and symbols), American philosophy, and environmental, business, and professional ethics, Jim has published numerous books and articles on these subjects. He is an environmental educator and is on the editorial board of Environmental Ethics, the premier journal on ethical and theoretical issues on the environment. He is a professor of philosophy, and previously served as chair of the Department of Philosophy, interim vice provost for research and graduate studies, interim director of graduate studies, and president of the faculty. Jim presently serves as dean of UAA’s College of Arts and Sciences, and is also co-founder of the Alaska Quarterly Review, a nationally recognized literary journal.

Helen Nienhueser

Previously a trustee, Helen rejoined the ACF board in 2003. She grew up in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains and graduated from Brown University. She came to Alaska in 1957 for a summer job, fell in love with Alaska, and came back to stay in 1959. Helen worked for the Girl Scouts for three years, homesteaded in Eagle River Valley, and had two sons. She became active in Alaska’s conservation movement in the late sixties and began work on 55 Ways to the Wilderness in Southcentral Alaska, a hiking guide now in its fifth edition. She helped found the Alaska Center for the Environment in 1971 and was one of five volunteer coordinators who kept ACE alive during the early seventies. In 1976 she went to work for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where she worked with director Mike Smith to enact fundamental change, and later helped establish and implement a planning process for state lands. In the eighties, Helen served seven years as trustee for ACF. In 1984-85 she took a leave of absence to earn a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She retired from DNR in 1994 and since has balanced travel and time at her cabins (with husband Gayle), six years as chair of the TRAAK Board (trails), creating Anchorage’s Midtown Park, and serving on the board of Alaska Common Ground.

Faon O’Connor
Emerging Leader Position

Faon grew up in New York and had completed two years at Harvard College when she participated in the Alaska Conservation Foundation’s Conservation Internship Program during the summer 2006. An intern at the Alaska Center for the Environment, she quickly became hooked on the Alaskan issues, opportunities for environmental activism, research, and the beauty of the state. Returning to Harvard, Faon redirected the bulk of her environmental policy coursework to focus on Alaska Native land management and environmental justice in Alaska. She returned in summer 2007 to travel throughout the state studying and researching post-ANCSA land management and subsistence practices with support from the Center for American Political Research and the Fitzie Foundation. A fall 2007 trip funded by the Harvard College Research Program bought her to the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention to enrich ongoing senior research on the mapping and implications of development in the Yukon Flats. In her final semester of school, Faon participated as a researcher through the Harvard University Native American Program’s Nation Building course, in which she worked for the First Alaskans Institute to study upcoming changes in the US Census and implications of altered demographic data resources for rural Alaskans. In summer 2008 Faon graduated with a degree in Government and minor in Environmental Sciences and Public Policy. Upon graduation, she quickly moved to Anchorage to begin a full time position as the Advocacy and Special Projects coordinator for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council.

David Robertson

Dave is a retired software consultant now living in Boulder, Colorado. He spent 16 years with the National Center for Atmospheric Research as a super computer systems programmer before establishing his software consulting business. He holds a B.S. in geology from Lehigh University, and started his career as a mining geologist after he completed military service. Dave served as chairman of the Colorado Mountain Club Conservation committee for five years, where he became “overly familiar” with the complexities of forest plans and planning. In the last eight years of running his software company, he principally worked with and for different environmental groups: Environmental Defense, Western Resource Advocates, The Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Nature Association, among others. His last major project before retiring was writing an extensive computer model of the Truckee and Carson River systems as they relate to the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, the Newlands Irrigation District, and Pyramid Lake. Dave has served on the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee and serves on a fundraising and advisory committee for the soon-to-be-opened Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum (bwamm.org), a joint undertaking by the American Alpine Club, the Colorado Mountain Club, and the National Geographic Society. He is particularly interested in balancing habitat preservation with recreational use, believing strongly that you cannot get people to love and protect open spaces unless they really know them and have at least limited access to them. Dave and his wife have made upwards of 40 trips to Alaska since 1965, and two of their three children live in Alaska, as do six of their eight grandchildren. There have been many adventures over the years in many of the precious places, including The Valley of 10,000 Smokes, the Juneau Icefields, Denali, the Chugach, and a couple of long backpack trips in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Dorene Schiro

Dorene rode up the Alaska-Canadian Highway with her parents when a year old. Her father’s passion for a truly wilderness lifestyle took their family to the remote arctic villages of Kotzebue, Shungnak and Ambler. Here they learned from the locals to harvest and preserve the abundant food resources of caribou, moose, seals, fish and berries. They also learned to craft their clothing, sleds, tools, and houses from local materials. As an adult, Dorene and her husband operated fishing business in the Kotzebue set-net fishery and in the Homer crab and halibut fishery. The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1988 to introduce their children to a very different culture and to excellent schools. Dorene helped her husband build an investment management company and then became Trustee and Director of a small charitable foundation. Through the Foundation, Dorene quickly became involved in the conservation efforts of Alaskan groups while also engaging in the local SF Bay non-profit community. She is excited to be a part of the movement across Alaska to protect this beautiful state!

Marilyn Sigman

Marilyn currently serves as a Marine Education Specialist for the Alaska Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence, working to link scientists, educators, and coastal communities in Alaska who are involved in outreach and education about ocean climate change. Marilyn has worked with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as the Southeast Alaska regional non-game coordinator and the statewide coordinator of the Alaska Wildlife Week program, where she was involved in the development and distribution of annual multimedia wildlife education units to every school in the state and in teacher training workshops. She has been a founder of several organizations, including the Alaska Natural Resources and Outdoor Education Association, the Southeast Alaska Coalition for Outdoor Education, the Southeast Ecotourism Alliance, the Kachemak Bay Ecotourism Network, and the Kachemak Bay Environmental Alliance, and served as a board member and president of the Alaska Natural History Association. Marilyn received her B.A. in Human Biology at Stanford and an M.S. in Wildlife Management at the University of Fairbanks. Marilyn enjoys hiking, tidepooling, reading, and creative nonfiction writing.

Leonard Steinberg

Leonard first came to Alaska in 1974 to evaluate the impact of a development project for his senior thesis. He has resided in Alaska for most of thirty plus years since then. Leonard has worked as a fisheries biologist in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in the Bering Sea. He has served as a legislative researcher in Juneau, helped keep the General Store in McCarthy in one piece prior to the establishment of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and—as executive director for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council—fought for the protection of wilderness in the Tongass National Forest during the years leading up to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Leonard previously served on the boards of the Alaska Conservation Alliance and Alaska Conservation Voters. He has been an attorney for more than 20 years and currently serves as general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief ethics officer of ACS, a publicly traded telecommunications firm based in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition to his law degree from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, Leonard has a master’s of business administration from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a master’s of public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.