Board

Mark Antoniewicz (he/him/his) is a strategic communications and stakeholder engagement specialist with a focus in sustainability, energy, and conservation. Over Mark’s 15-year professional career, he has been a change-agent and movement builder within the government, nonprofit, and corporate sectors. 

Mark is currently helping Google bolster their corporate leadership in energy and sustainability, leveraging its size and expertise to drive positive change. This includes helping build a movement to power the world’s electrical grids with 24/7 carbon-free energy, an imperative component to addressing global warming. 

Prior to helping Google, Mark served as the Director of Communications for Hip Hop Caucus, a national nonprofit that combines culture and policy to energize movements and empower communities impacted first and worst by injustice. While in this role, he conducted voter engagement in multiple election cycles and helped develop “Think 100%”, an award-winning multimedia climate justice platform focused on elevating the voices of young people and people of color.  

Mark moved to Hip Hop Caucus after serving two years as a political appointee within President Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality. As a member of the Public Engagement team, he helped diversify and mobilize stakeholder support for the administration’s historic commitment to protecting the environment and addressing climate change. Prior to the White House, Mark served in the Office of Small Business at the United States Department of Transportation, where his team worked to ensure that the nation’s small, minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses had opportunities to succeed within the transportation industry. Mark is a proud native of Madison, Wisconsin, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Connecticut. His favorite places to be are out in nature with his family and on the basketball court. Follow Mark on Twitter @M4RK4NTONIEWICZ and on LinkedIn.

Julie Gorte is Senior Vice President for Sustainable Investing at Impax Asset Management LLC, the North American division of Impax Asset Management Group and investment adviser to Pax World Funds. She oversees environmental, social and governance-related research on prospective and current investments as well as the firm’s shareholder engagement and public policy advocacy. Julie is also a member of the Impax Gender Analytics team. Prior to joining the firm, Julie served as Vice President and Chief Social Investment Strategist at Calvert. Her experience before she joined the investment world in 1999 includes various roles. Julie spent nearly 14 years as Senior Associate and Project Director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Additionally, she has held the roles of Vice President for Economic and Environmental Research at The Wilderness Society, and Program Manager for Technology Programs in the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy office and Senior Associate at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

Julie serves on the boards of the Endangered Species Coalition, E4theFuture, Clean Production Action and is the board chair of the Sustainable Investments Institute. Julie received a Ph.D. and Master of Science in resource economics from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Science in forest management at Northern Arizona University.

 

Adrienne L. Hollis is the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In that role, she leads the development, design, and implementation of methods for accessing and documenting the health impacts of climate change on communities of color and other traditionally disenfranchised groups. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Hollis served as the director of federal policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice and taught at the George Washington University Milken School of Public Health and the American University Washington College of Law. She has more than 20 years of extensive experience in the environmental arena, particularly focused on environmental justice, equity and inclusion, and the adverse health effects of environmental exposures and climate change on vulnerable communities, as an associate professor in public health, and as an environmental toxicologist and an environmental attorney. She is a member of numerous organizations and boards, including the EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, the National Adaptation Forum’s Steering Committee (co-chair) and its Equity Working Group, the American Public Health Association’s Environment Section and Environmental Justice Subcommittee, the Endangered Species Coalition (general counsel) and the Green Leadership Trust. She earned a BS in biology from Jackson State University, a PhD in biomedical sciences from Meharry Medical College, a JD from Rutgers University School of Law, and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard University School of Public Health.

She earned a BS in biology from Jackson State University, a PhD in biomedical sciences from Meharry Medical College, a JD from Rutgers University School of Law, and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard University School of Public Health. Dr. Hollis hails from Mobile, Alabama.

David Inouye is an ecologist and conservation biologist, retired from teaching at the University of Maryland, but still active in his long-term research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (at 9,500′ in Colorado). 2022 is his 52nd year working there, mostly on wildflowers and pollinators, and the effects of climate change on their phenology and interactions (research supported by the National Science Foundation). David works with hummingbirds, now by helping as the bander for two research groups looking at their vision, flower-visiting behavior, beak morphology, and genetics; last summer he banded about 300, of 4 different species. David also has some long-term (since 1973) projects on plant demography, following individually tagged plants in an annual census. He has also done a lot of work with bumblebees. David serves on the Boards of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and a local NGO (Citizens for a Healthy Community) that is focused on keeping oil and gas drilling out of our watershed (valley of the North Fork of the Gunnison River), which has the largest concentration of organic farms, vineyards, and orchards in the state. He serves as a reviewer, a few times a year, for National Science Foundation panels, reviews a lot of articles for scientific journals, is a member of the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission’s working group on biological resources, a member of the Colorado 7th Judicial District Nominating Commission, and is part of a working group funded by the USDA to establish a new national monitoring program for native bees. David enjoys photography, white-water rafting (rowing a raft through the Grand Canyon for 21 days in March 2022), backpacking, bicycling, and growing and harvesting most of the food that we eat.
Lisa Jaguzny is Senior Program Director at the Biodiversity Funders Group and oversees the Land and Freshwater and Marine Conservation Programs. After a long career in leadership roles in various sectors of the conservation community, she brings her deep knowledge of conservation together with her love of convening to activate funders to accelerate policy change. Before coming to BFG, she recently led Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center, where she transformed the 240 acre farm into a force for promoting climate resilient practices through regenerative agriculture and environmental stewardship. Prior to Oxbow, Lisa led the Campion Foundation where she served as CEO for nearly 10 years and created the Campion Advocacy Fund, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit focused on protecting US public lands and fostering indigenous-led campaigns to protect Alaska’s lands and waters. Lisa served as Deputy Director for People For Puget Sound for 11 years, during which time she led the campaign that resulted in the protection of more than 1,000 miles of Puget Sound shorelines. Lisa has served as a Board Member for the Western Conservation Foundation and the Biodiversity Funders Group. She holds a BA from Trinity College, and an Executive MBA Certificate from Stanford University’s Center for Social Innovation.

Dr. Nichole Keway Biber is a tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (Waganakising Odawa). Nichole serves on the Board of the Anishinaabek Caucus, where she helps to advance issues of importance to Indigenous communities, including her work as the lead of the Wolf and Wildlife Preservation Team. A longtime grassroots activist who focuses on environmental justice as the foundational site of healing, she is also a Water Protector, jingle dress dancer, and organic home gardener. Nichole is also appointed to the East Lansing Parks and Recreation Commission and the Ingham County Environmental Advisory Commission, where her focus is to uplift and advocate for the restoration of pollinator habitat. She is committed to taking action in defense of wildlife, as all those lives are necessary to the practice of Anishinaabe cultural instructions. Gidinawendimin: We are all Related.

Stephanie Kurose is Senior Endangered Species Policy Specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity where she develops policy and advocacy strategies to protect our nation’s most imperiled animals and plants and the wild places they live. As part of this work, she engages with Congress and the administration to secure stronger protections for endangered species and their habitats, assists in litigation to secure protections for threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and educates the public on threats to wildlife and biodiversity. She earned her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law, and a Masters in Global Environmental Policy from American University School of International Service. Her favorite critters are the monarch butterfly and the pangolin, and her favorite flowers are dahlias. In her spare time, she loves to read, garden, and work on her family’s farm in Connecticut where they raise chickens and honeybees.

In her 35 years with the Smithsonian and related institutions, Ruth has created powerful programs that changed the way people think about conservation, science, and environment. She has forged connections through hosting hundreds of live and web-based conversations to harness the power of science in our culture. She led the elite team that produced and built audiences for Earth Optimism Summits from 2017-22. Earth Optimism reached more than 400m people worldwide on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2020. Earth Optimism will be a theme of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival
on Washington, DC’s National Mall June 22 – July 4, 2022.

Stolk is presently a Smithsonian Research Associate, writing about US Conservation in the early 1900s. She was recently awarded a Bell Research Grant by the Forest History Society at Duke University. She holds a BA and Master’s degree in English Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ruth’s interdisciplinary team created the Smithsonian’s “Working Land and Seascapes” and “Movement of Life” Action Areas – which incentivize project co-design among scientists and communities. In the past 15 years, Ruth has created and led dozens of incubators across health/environment, Science for Global Goals, species and ecosystem conservation, and intergenerational engagement, which have led to important integrative research programs from Alaska to Kenya, engaging multiple partner organizations in meaningful collaborations.

Virginia Working Landscapes (VWL), which Ruth co-founded in 2010 with the scientific team at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, flourishes as a Smithsonian model for successful science/community engagement toward improving rural landscape management. VWL has catalyzed broader regional programs like “Chesapeake Working Landscapes,” based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

In the 1990s, Ruth Anna pioneered some of the first distance learning platforms for Smithsonian’s National Zoo NOAHS Center, along with award-winning educational series with PBS “The New Explorers” and educational broadcast networks. She successfully pitched and created “Saving Stuff,” a best-selling book published by Simon and Schuster. She has overseen volume-editing for key book series for Brill Publishers in The Netherlands since 1987.

Lori Udall has over 25 years of experience in international and domestic environmental policy, indigenous rights, and governance and public accountability of international development institutions. In 1967, her father, Stewart Udall—as Secretary of Interior—issued the first endangered species list under the Endangered Species Preservation Act. His list included such great American icons as the timber wolf, red wolf, bald eagle, grizzly bear, American alligator, and the peregrine falcon. Lori continues the family legacy work on endangered species. She is currently President of Montpelier Consulting, LLC, and Program Director for Sacharuna Foundation which focuses on land conservation, endangered species, sustainable agriculture, and indigenous rights and livelihoods. Sacharuna has supported campaigns around the gray wolf, African elephant, and the Hawaiian monk seal. Lori previously worked with First Nations Development Institute, International Rivers Network, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Udall has an M.C.L. from George Washington University, an L.L.M. from Downing College, Cambridge, England, and a B.A. from George Mason University.

Story Warren is a recent graduate of the University of Montana, earning a B.S. in Wildlife Biology. She grew up in Washington State with a love of the outdoors. Upon seeing her first wild wolves in Yellowstone at age six, her love of wolves and wildlife was sparked. She began testifying before state and federal wildlife commissions as a young teen, advocating for consideration of the perspectives of young people and future generations in wildlife conservation policy decisions. In 2012, following the death of famous Yellowstone wolves “06” and 754M, she began the social media campaign “Kids4Wolves” to educate young people about wolf conservation, behavior, and ecology, as well as to get students and young people involved in the political process governing wolf and wildlife conservation. For this endeavor, Story earned the President’s Environmental Youth Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

Story has studied and monitored a Washington wolf pack since 2014 using tracking and trail cameras, following the lives of the family and individual wolves for over seven years. During her college years, she spent three summers doing field work for the wolf programs of state fish and wildlife agencies. She spent the summer of 2021 as a Demmer Scholar in Washington, D.C., learning about the intersection of natural resources and federal policy, and working as an intern for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s government relations team. Story is passionate about conserving biodiversity, ethical wildlife conservation, and getting young people involved in the wildlife policymaking process.