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Marianne Pettis, Executive Director
Marianne has been dedicated to environmental work for 35 years, since her high school participation in the Youth Conservation Corps of Atlanta. She studied biology and ecology in college and graduate school, becoming a fisheries biologist and endangered species coordinator for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Since moving to Maryland, Marianne has served for seven years as Assistant Director of the Howard County Conservancy and for the past two years as an organization and planning consultant with the Robinson Foundation. Besides splashing in rivers with her husband and three sons, Marianne loves to paint, quilt, and cook heirloom tomatoes and other local foods.
Julie Dunlap, Research and Communications Consultant Books helped awaken Julie’s love of nature, especially children’s stories such as The Little House on the Prairie about her native Kansas. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring helped convince her to major in Biology at the University of Missouri, and Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac led to doctoral research on environmental values at Yale University. Now she writes about nature and environmental history for adults and children. Her latest children's book is Parks for the People: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted and she is co-editor of a new literary anthology, Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together. When she occasionally puts down her books, she hikes with her family and volunteers for the Audubon Society of Central Maryland as their Schoolyard Habitat Grant Coordinator. |