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.

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.

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.