Community Leader

I believe people care for the places they know, and that they come to know them best together. For more than a decade I’ve turned that belief into work: through service on boards and committees focused on the environment, education, and equity and through the Community Ecology Institute, an award-winning nonprofit I founded and led for a decade.

I founded the Community Ecology Institute (CEI) to cultivate communities where people and nature thrive together. Over the next decade it grew into an award-winning nonprofit with a staff of 25+, an annual budget of over $1 million, and an annual reach of over 5,000 people.

• Freetown Farm: we preserved the last working farm in Columbia, Maryland, as a living classroom open to the whole community.
• The Green Farmacy Garden: we preserved Jim and Peggy Duke’s garden in Fulton, a unique botanical sanctuary.
• Programs for every age: seven nature-based programs for children, families, adults, and older adults, designed so people often left out of environmental education had a real place in them.
• Partnerships: local, county, and state agencies, with grants from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, Howard County, the State of Maryland, and private foundations.

My work at CEI has been recognized with honors including the NAACP Environmental and Social Justice Award (2024) and the University of Maryland Cornerstone Award (2022). See Recognition for the full list.

CEI grew out of Columbia Families in Nature (CFIN), a family nature club I founded in 2014 as a part of my doctoral research. In its first three years, CFIN held more than 150 free events for more than 400 families, from free play and hikes to tree plantings, stream clean-ups, and creating pollinator gardens. It was the success of this program, as well as the social capital that came out of my community volunteerism, that created the conditions for me to be able to launch CEI and lead it to so much success. 

I’ve served on boards and committees at the neighborhood, county, and state levels:

• Maryland Outdoor Learning Partnership, member (2024)
• Howard County Public Garden Advisory Committee (2024)
• University of Maryland Extension Advisory Committee, Howard County (2023–2024)
• Howard County Racial Equity Task Force (2020–2021)
• Columbia Association Climate Change and Sustainability Advisory Committee (2018–2021)
• Maryland Sierra Club, Executive Committee (2018–2020)
• Audubon Society of Central Maryland, Board of Directors (2015–2019)
• Harper’s Choice Village Center Community Plan Committee, Chair (2009–2012)
• Harper’s Choice Village Board (2008–2010)

I’m also a Master Gardener and a guest instructor for the University of Maryland Extension’s Master Naturalist program.