NATURESERVE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Associate Botanist / Senior Information Scientist
- Associate Botanist and Senior Information Scientist
- Member of the Science Information Resources
Adele Tomaino is a member of the Science Information Resources and Botany departments. She works on botanical aspects of data exchange, member program support, and data development. Before joining NatureServe in 2002, she was an ecologist with the New York Natural Heritage Program for five years. She has an M.S. in Forest Ecology from Ohio State University and a B.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan. She currently resides in Washington, DC.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Director of Network Relations
Job Titles:
- Digital Marketing Specialist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Interim President and Executive Vice President, Programs
Job Titles:
- Chief Zoologist and Interim Chief Scientist
- Interim Chief Scientist & Chief Zoologist
Bruce Young is NatureServe's Chief Zoologist and Interim Chief Scientist. He has over 25 years of experience in biodiversity research and conservation, having led numerous efforts to promote animal conservation through the development of conservation status ranks, management guidance, and coordination with state natural heritage programs. His leadership has led to first-ever assessments of hundreds of insect pollinators and the publication of several reports on the status and assessment of pollinators in North America. As a major collaborator to the Global Amphibian, Mammal, and Reptile Assessments, Dr. Young has helped revolutionize global conservation efforts for these groups. His work on climate change and biodiversity, especially the development of the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index has catalyzed thousands of climate change vulnerability assessments and led to recognition by U.S. Department of Interior in the form of a Partners in Conservation Award. He holds a BA in Biology from Cornell University and a PhD from the University of Washington and is an active scientific author: his 70+ publications in the peer-reviewed literature have been cited over 19,000 times.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Montana ( Chair )
Job Titles:
- Conservation Data Analyst
- Conservation Planning Analyst
- Conservation Spatial Analyst
As a Conservation Data Analyst, Cameron works closely with NatureServe's Multi-Jurisdictional Data (MJD) locational data from it aggregation into a national dataset to its delivery to clients. Cameron's primary function is to ensure the currentness, standardization, and quality control of the MJD dataset. Cameron's responsibilities include aggregating species occurrence data from North American Member Programs into NatureServe's central database, filling tabular and GIS data requests for NatureServe's Multi-Jurisdictional Data (MJD), and acting as a GIS and technical lead on major and minor projects. Cameron is based in Arlington, Virginia.
Prior to joining NatureServe in 2005, Cameron worked for 5 years as a technical consultant for High Performance Technologies, Inc., where he worked with several federal and state government agencies. During this time Cameron gained experience in many areas of the IT field including technical research, systems analysis, database management, applications development, technical support, and web development. Cameron obtained a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary. Cameron spent twelve years growing up in Central America and Haiti and is fluent in Spanish.
Carl has been a Regional Vegetation Ecologist at NatureServe's Durham, North Carolina office since June 2001. His work for NatureServe has included vegetation ecology fieldwork throughout the Southeast (east of the Mississippi River). He has been involved in a number of projects which use information to create conservation tools and ecosystem management products for land managing agencies, such as the USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, and The Nature Conservancy. Prior to joining NatureServe, Carl worked for 5 years as Botanist for the Tennessee Natural Heritage Program, and as a Field Ecologist for 2 years for The Nature Conservancy of Georgia (Altamaha River), and over 2 years for Florida Natural Area Inventory (at Eglin Air Force Base). He has also been involved in prescribed fire activities and has been on over 50 prescribed burns. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (B.S. Botany).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Maryland ( Vice Chair )
Carolyn is an oncologist/hematologist practicing at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, specializing in breast cancer. Along with her clinical work in breast cancer, she is the co-medical director of Montgomery Hospice in suburban Rockville and serves as a trustee on the board of Suburban Hospital Healthcare System. In May 2015, Carolyn had just joined the Board of Directors of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (WPC), NatureServe's member in Pennsylvania. She has been a volunteer with WPC since purchasing land from them in 2010. She is an active birder and a member of the Board of the American Bird Conservancy.
Job Titles:
- Manager, Bird Population Monitoring
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Coordinator of the Manitoba Conservation Data Centre
- NSC Chair / Coordinator, Manitoba Conservation Data Centre
Chris Friesen is the Coordinator of the Manitoba Conservation Data Centre (MBCDC), based in Winnipeg. He started with the MBCDC in 2008 and for several years led field surveys for species-at-risk. He subsequently became the CDC Data Manager and then Coordinator. As MBCDC Coordinator, Chris sits on the board of NatureServe Canada where he serves as Secretary.
Chris serves on the management boards of several significant habitats in Manitoba, including the Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve. The Preserve includes the largest remaining tracts of tall grass prairie in the province and is home to several globally at-risk species and many nationally and provincially rare species. He coordinates the provincial government's involvement in numerous partnerships and projects to conserve at-risk species and habitats. Chris also sits on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which assesses and recommends species for designation under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
Chris is a plant ecologist by training, having received a BSc (Forest Policy and Management) from the University of Winnipeg in 2004, and an MSc (Botany) from the University of Manitoba in 2007 where he studied the pollination ecology of a rare orchid. He also dabbles in entomology. Having grown up on the mixed-grass prairie of southwest Manitoba, Chris is a prairie boy at heart and welcomes opportunities to leave the office to explore the natural wonders Manitoba has to offer. He lives in the small town of Warren with his wife, two children, three cats, and one dog.
Job Titles:
- Director of Spatial Analysis
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Coordinator, Northwest Territories Conservation Data Centre
Job Titles:
- IT Technician
- IT Support Technician
Job Titles:
- Operations Manager
- Operations Manager for the Conservation Information Systems
Courtney Ravert is the Operations Manager for the Conservation Information Systems and Conservation Services Divisions of NatureServe. She graduated from James Madison University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. She now assists staff across two divisions in project management tasks such as budget development and maintenance, contract preparation, and proposal development. Prior to her current position, she served as the Project and Administrative Assistant for the Information Division with NatureServe and also served as the Manager of Member Programs with the Air Force Association. She has extensive experience in the administrative field along with several years of experience in project management assistance
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Director and Chief Scientist of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program
David Anderson is the Director and Chief Scientist of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program (CNHP). He has worked at the Colorado Natural Heritage Program since 1999, when he joined the staff as an assistant botanist.
As CNHP Director, Dave has been active in service to the NatureServe network. He served as a West Region rep on the US Section Council from 2008-2017, co-authoring during that time the Guidelines for Network Interaction to support our collaborative efforts as a Network. He represented the Section Council twice at the Joint Member Management Meeting (J3M), assisting with the development and implementation of strategic plans. He organized a staff exchange with Florida Natural Features Inventory and loves to collaborate with other Heritage Programs. In 2014 he received a Fulbright Specialist Award to work at the Wildlife Institute of India in an exchange of methodology for tracking rare species.
Prior to his career at CNHP, Dave spent years doing fieldwork, including five field seasons in the Arctic. These included two seasons with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, collecting plants and mapping vegetation in Alaska, and completing his graduate research on Devon Island in Nunavut, Canada, the Earth's largest uninhabited island. There he studied the interactions of the sparse polar desert flora with intense freezing and thawing processes called cryoturbation. He and his wife Jen then joined the Peace Corps, serving in the Solomon Islands from 1996-1998, where Dave taught science to 6-8th graders.
Dave grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and holds a BA in Biology from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MS in Botany from the University of Washington. He has lived in Fort Collins, CO, since 1999. He and his wife Jen have two amazing daughters named after plants and a dog named Meadow.
Job Titles:
- Biodiversity Data Scientist
Job Titles:
- National Natural Resource Conservation Information Specialist
Job Titles:
- Principal
- Software Engineer
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Alan Weakley is a plant taxonomist, community ecologist, and conservationist specializing in the Southeastern United States. He holds a B.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from Duke University. He has worked as a botanist and ecologist for the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program and as a regional and chief ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and NatureServe, and currently serves as Director of the UNC-CH Herbarium, a department of the North Carolina Botanical Garden and teaches as adjunct faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill and at the Highlands Biological Station. In the course of his career, he has worked cooperatively with most federal and state land-managing agencies in the southeastern United States.
Alan is the author of the Flora of the Southeastern United States and its app version, FloraQuest, and co-author (with Chris Ludwig and Johnny Townsend) of the Flora of Virginia and the Flora of Virginia App, which have received awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Award for Conservation. He is also co-author (with Laura Cotterman and Damon Waitt) of Wildflowers of the Atlantic Southeast. Working with a team of botanists and data scientists across the southeastern United States, Alan is leading a project to complete an enhanced version of the Flora of the Southeastern United States and also develop a series of apps, FloraQuest, covering the 25-state region.
The FloraQuest apps are designed by Alan and the Southeastern Flora Team as a modernized reinvention of "the flora", designed to present the standard kinds of information usually found in a scientific flora (dichotomous keys, information on habitat, distribution, taxonomy, scientific references) with additional conservation-related information (rarity, conservatism, habitat dependency) and innovative identification tools (graphic keys, diagnostic photos) made possible by digital technology. The goal is to empower biodiversity conservation by a greater diversity of people, including nonprofessionals wanting to contribute through citizen or participatory science.
Alan has authored over 100 journal articles and book chapters and is in high demand as a speaker on plant taxonomy, community classification, and mapping, biogeography, and biodiversity conservation. He is active with the Flora of North America project and the United States National Vegetation Classification and serves as an advisor to the N.C. Natural Heritage Program and N.C. Plant Conservation Program, and is a co-founder of the Carolina Vegetation Survey. As a trustee and board member of public and private conservation granting agencies and foundations, he has helped direct and oversee $400,000,000 of land conservation grants in the Southeastern United States.
Job Titles:
- GIS Analyst, Conservation Information and Planning
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Senior Director of Federal Government Relations for Pfizer
Francisco serves as Senior Director of Federal Government Relations for Pfizer, a role he has held since May 2021. He is responsible for the company's outreach to House Democrats and focuses on policy issues related to patient access and affordability.
Prior to joining Pfizer, Francisco was the District Director for Congresswoman Nanette Barragan from 2018 to 2021 and served as her Acting Chief of Staff from 2019 to 2020. He previously served in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2017.
He held several positions at the U.S. Department of the Interior, including Deputy Director for Intergovernmental and External Affairs, and worked on several Secretarial initiatives, including America's Great Outdoors and the Latino Heritage Preservation program.
He also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental and External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Francisco began his career on Capitol Hill as a staff member in the Office of Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. He also served on the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Financial Services, and General Government. Francisco has also worked for the City of Los Angeles and for UCLA in their federal government relations offices.
Francisco earned his Bachelor's degree in Political Science from UCLA and a Master's of Science degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Johns Hopkins University. He and his wife Felicia and their two young sons live in Silver Spring, MD.
Job Titles:
- Ecological Modeler / Biodiversity Data Scientist
Job Titles:
- Senior Information Scientist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- NSC Secretary / Acting Manager, British Columbia Conservation Data Centre
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Director of the Euchee Butterfly Farm
- Oklahoma ( Secretary )
Jane Breckinridge is the director of the Euchee Butterfly Farm located in Leonard, Oklahoma, and an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She has spent the last twenty years raising and exhibiting butterflies throughout the United States and Canada, as well as providing community and youth education on butterflies.
In 2013, Ms. Breckinridge founded the Natives Raising Natives Project, which is teaching rural tribal members to be butterfly farmers in order to reduce unemployment, promote science education for Native youth and raise awareness of the need for protecting the fragile eco-systems that support butterflies and other threatened pollinators. She is the co-director of Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM) and Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP) which partner with Monarch Watch and Native American tribes to restore habitat on tribal lands.
She has spent over thirty years working in the magazine publishing industry, specializing in audience development and consumer marketing, and graduated from Macalester College with a BA in Political Science.
Job Titles:
- Virginia Division of Natural Heritage, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Coordinator, Saskatchewan Conservation Data Centre
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Chief Advancement Officer
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Science Advisor, Ecosystem Science / Fisheries and Oceans
Job Titles:
- Director of Technology and Project Management
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
John Trezise served in the Department of the Interior for 35 years. During his tenure, John held senior executive positions in law, budget, and program management. He retired in 2007 after eight years as the Department's Director of Budget. He received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive in 2002.
John joined the Department in 1971 as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor. He served as Assistant Solicitor for Administrative Law and General Legal Services, providing legal advice on administrative law, appropriations law, and legal issues involving the organization, management and personnel of the Department and as Deputy Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs, the senior career position for Indian programs.
During his career in the Department, John was also Director of the Office of Construction Management, a member of the staff of the Assistant Secretary-Policy, Budget and Administration, and chief of the Office of Budget's Division of Budget and Program Review.
After retiring from Interior, John was a contractor for the Surveys and Investigations Staff of the House Committee on Appropriations, conducting financial and management reviews of Federal agency use of appropriated funds.
John was born in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the American University in 1968 and the University of Michigan Law School in 1971. While attending American University, he was a clerk in the office of Representative James G. O'Hara of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Coordinator, Alberta Conservation Information Management System
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Interim CEO and Chief Information Officer
Lori Scott serves as NatureServe's Interim CEO and Chief Information Officer. She oversees NatureServe's technology team, with a portfolio that includes software product development, user support, and IT infrastructure for mission critical enterprise information management and delivery systems. Since joining NatureServe in 2000, Lori has led the successful transformation of the organization's core biodiversity data platform Biotics 5 and its public information delivery platform NatureServe Explorer. Lori's team supports NatureServe's Network of Natural Heritage Programs with implementation of sophisticated online tools to automate environmental review and to manage direct treatment for invasive species in their jurisdictions.
Job Titles:
- Director of Science Information Resources
NatureServe commits to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace where people feel they belong and are welcomed and valued for their unique views and the ways in which their identities are expressed.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager and Ecology Information Scientist
Job Titles:
- Science Project Manager & Data Quality Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Senior Software Engineer
- Software Engineer
Job Titles:
- Director of Biodiversity Indicators Program
Job Titles:
- Office of Democratic Leader
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Virginia ( Treasurer )
Nancy's childhood was spent at the New Jersey shore outside swimming, biking, and bird watching, or else inside practicing music and reading. In high school, besides studying, she sang with the All-State chorus and simultaneously played flute in All-State band. This prepared her well for four years at Swarthmore College. She chose Swarthmore because the campus is an arboretum and she loves trees. Again, she spent as much time outside as possible. She followed this with four years at Temple Medical School. After her internship, she decided to specialize in surgery and moved to Massachusetts in 1973 to complete her surgical training.
She soon fell in love with the climate and topography of Massachusetts and made friends in the music and natural history communities. She bought 80 acres of forest land to teach herself about forest management first-hand. She became friends with Bob Leverett, who is considered the go-to guy in Massachusetts for anything having to do with trees, especially old-growth forests. They spent many happy hours together, trying to find the biggest and tallest trees in Western Massachusetts.
Because of her concern for habitat preservation, she served on the Massachusetts Advisory Board of the Nature Conservancy and still serves on the Massachusetts Audubon Society board of directors as an honorary member. She purchased and donated four tracts of land (about 600 acres) for preservation, giving them to four different land protection organizations.
She has since retired to Charlottesville, Virginia. She loves it there, too, as she has almost all of her Massachusetts species as well as new ones. She joined the board of the 500 Year Forest Foundation as its mission followed her interest in old-growth forests, and she continued her board membership with the American Bird Conservancy.
She continued learning about the natural world, becoming a certified tree steward and a Virginia Master Naturalist.
At her home, she has five acres enclosed by a deer excluding fence in which she has rooted out the invasives and planted only species native to the area. For the past few years, she has been an active member and chair of the Natural Heritage Committee of Albemarle County. The committee is charged with advising the Board of Supervisors on policy concerning the county's 465,000 acres of land. They are currently working on light pollution, zoning in the rural area, and establishing a tree commission. Work on projects for this committee as well as leading field trips about the forest, birds, butterflies, and most recently on tracking, keep her happily engaged with the outdoors.
Job Titles:
- Zoologist and Data Manager
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Member of the Board of Directors
Patrick McIntyre serves as  Director of Ecology at NatureServe's Boulder, Colorado office. In this role, Patrick works with conservation partners across western North America, from Alaska to the Yucatan, to further NatureServe's mission of providing the scientific basis for effective conservation action. Patrick's areas of focus include the effects of climate change on forest ecosystems, classifying and mapping ecosystems, and improving the availability of biodiversity data for conservation decision making.
In his over 20 years in ecology and conservation, Patrick has worked with the California Natural Heritage Program, the National Park Service, and collaborated on conservation research projects at the University of California Berkeley, San Diego State University, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Patrick has a PhD in ecology from UC Davis and a Master's in biology from Northern Arizona University, where he studied plant range limits and plant-arthropod interactions.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Acting Coordinator, Nunavut Conservation Data Centre
- Acting Coordinator, Yukon Conservation Data Centre
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Vice President for Data and Methods
Job Titles:
- Director of Marketing and Communications
- Member of the Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Executive Director, Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- NSC Treasurer / Coordinator, Ontario Natural Heritage Information Centre
Job Titles:
- Chief Business Officer
- Chief Operating Officer
- Member of the Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Partner
Mr. Quarles is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Nossaman LLP. He is a veteran attorney who focuses his practice on addressing issues concerning federal wildlife laws (Endangered Species Act (ESA), Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) and Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA), federal lands and resources (including resource use, siting, and access law), and renewable energy. He represents a wide range of associations and companies, policy coalitions, state governments, local governments, land conservation trusts, and environmental organizations. Mr. Quarles has served in high positions in the U.S. Department of the Interior and on the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He is active as an officer and member of the Board of several non-profit organizations. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Retired Journalist
Urban Lehner is a retired journalist and an active environmentalist. He spent 33 years at The Wall Street Journal, including 20 years in Europe and Asia, with his last two positions being vice president, business development, based in New York, and publisher and executive editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. He spent another nine years in Omaha as editor-in-chief and vice president of editorial for DTN/The Progressive Farmer, an agriculture and energy news service. His journalistic awards include an Overseas Press Club citation for excellence in 1989 for a series of articles on U.S.-Japan relations and being named 2009 Writer of the Year by the American Agricultural Editors Association.
From 2017 to 2020 Urban served as chair of the board of the International Crane Foundation. He is a past president of the Nebraska Ornithologists' Union and served on the board of the Audubon Society of Omaha. He joined the NatureServe board in 2016. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Georgetown University's Law School.
Job Titles:
- Product Support Specialist
Whitney Weber is a DBA and Product Support Specialist at NatureServe. She installs Biotics within member programs and provides technical support, training, and testing of the software, in addition to providing GIS support. She previously worked at the Montana Natural Heritage Program and The Nature Conservancy of Montana as GIS and Database Coordinator for 3 years. Prior to her work managing tabular and spatial data on species of concern, she spent a couple wonderful years in the field studying wildlife. She has a bachelor's degree in Biology and Spanish from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's degree in Wildlife Ecology from Southern Illinois University.