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"The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone."
~ Janine Benyus

 

 

 

 

Photo Credits
Our Team PDF Print E-mail

Staff

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Bryony Schwan - Executive Director

Bryony SchwanPrior to Bryony's involvement with The Biomimicry Institute, she worked for over 11 years as the Executive Director and then as the National Campaigns Director for Women's Voices for the Earth (WVE) a non-profit environmental justice organization that she founded in 1995. WVE works on the links between toxic pollution and women's and children's health. From 2001 to 2004, Bryony co-founded and coordinated Coming Clean, a national alliance of health and environmental groups.

Bryony was born in Zimbabwe and moved to the United States in 1981. She has a BA in Art from the University of Natal in South Africa and an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. Bryony¹s work has taken her around the world from speaking on chemical policy in Europe to lobbying at the United Nations Treaty Negotiations on Eliminating Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in South Africa. She has received several awards for her work including an AWR Conservation Award, the Len and Sandy Sargent Award for Environmental Activism and Montana's Jeannette Rankin Peacemaker of the Year Award (2002).

Bryony is also the founder of the Women's Institute for Leadership Development in Women (WILD Women) and the Young Women¹s Outdoor Leadership Project (now called GUTS! Girls Using Their Strengths). Bryony co-produces "In Other Words," a weekly feminist radio show on Montana Public Radio. She has served on the board of many organizations including the Social Justice Fund Northwest, a progressive foundation based in Seattle, and the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, a national labor and environment alliance. She currently serves on the board of Greenpeace USA and Montana's St. Patrick Hospital Women's Health Advisory Board. 

Diana Lee - Director of Development

Diana Lee, Director of DevelopmentDiana has two decades of experience building constituencies for environmental protection. Prior to joining the staff of The Biomimicry Institute, she worked for Earthjustice; the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security; Redefining Progress; and Greenpeace. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Ms Lee earned a B.A. at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where she studied art, and later returned to Hawaii, where she co-founded a modern dance company. Diana sees fund raising as an opportunity to bring together people who share common values and want to use their resources to invest in solutions to pressing, systemic problems.

Sam Stier - Director of K-12 & Non-formal Education, Manager of Innovation for Conservation 

ImageSam has a decade plus of experience working on ecological education, wildlife conservation, and environmental policy. Sam has taught outdoor, inquiry-based ecological education to dozens of classes of young students in the Philippines and United States, as a Peace Corps Volunteer and National Science Foundation Fellow, and has worked with college students as an instructor and campus director of diversity programs. In the Philippines, one of world’s biodiversity hotspots, Sam founded the country’s first natural history educational center, which today supports 140,000 annual visitors.

In addition to environmental education, Sam has experience working on both the scientific and social aspects of wildlife conservation. For four years he worked as a field biologist in the Philippines, studying the dietary habits of the largest bat species in the world using hunter surveys, fecal analysis, and radio telemetry. He also continues to co-manage a community-based wildlife monitoring project in the Philippines, begun in 2002, which collaborates with 31 Filipino non-profit organizations and has trained over 200 local people in wildlife monitoring techniques. Sam’s conservation efforts also include working successfully to persuade large companies to invest in conservation initiatives, including Motorola’s $1.2 million donation of radio communications equipment to underfunded protected areas worldwide, and the Shell Foundation’s $200,000 support of one of the first forest restoration projects in the tropics designed around the specific habitat needs of a threatened species. Other companies he has worked on environmental projects with include British Petroleum, Intel, SC Johnson, and Weyerhaeuser.

Cindy Gilbert - Director of University Education & Manager of Biomimicry Professional Certificate Program   

ImageCindy was raised on a small farm in southern Ontario where she spent her days wandering in woodlands and playing in creeks. It was from her first 18 years of life on the farm and understanding the true nature of one place that she developed her passion for sustainable living. Since that time Cindy has nurtured her awe for the natural world through a combination of travel, research and education. Cindy completed her MS in wildlife science from Oregon State University and her BSc in biology from the University of Guelph in Ontario. Cindy’s research focused primarily on the impacts of climate change on arctic and antarctic seabirds. Cindy also has extensive teaching experience; she has taught in elementary school classrooms, at the university level, as well as with environmental education programs. Cindy earned her graduate diploma in education from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Cindy is an avid gardener and all-season bicyclist; she also loves to practice yoga, ski, hot spring, and float rivers.  

Megan Schuknecht - Manager of University Relations & Biologist at the Design Table

schuknecht_headshot.jpgMegan is a biologist with a strong interdisciplinary background in ecology, environmental health, education, and sustainability and social justice issues. She spent her youth in the forests, creeks, and hedgerows of eastern Wisconsin, and later served in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, where she worked as a beekeeping extension agent. Most recently, she worked as a consultant for the Biomimicry Guild, helping global companies look to nature for inspiration to develop sustainable and innovative technologies. In her current role at the Institute, Megan teaches Biomimicry & Design classes and workshops, lectures on biomimicry to university audiences, and works with faculty and administrators to incorporate biomimicry tools and concepts into university classrooms and curricula. Megan graduated from Grinnell College with a BA in biology and earned an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana.

Angela Klinefelter - Financial Executive Assistant

Angela Klinefelter Angela landed in Montana in 1992 after leaving her home state, Pennsylvania, to pursue an education in wildlife biology. After earning her B.S. in 1996, she took a position as a Park Service naturalist in Grand Teton National Park. A year later she was hired as the first program biologist for Wind River Bear Institute, where the majority of her time was spent, literally, in the field of bear management throughout northwest Montana. Angela’s days were divided between utilizing Karelian Bear Dogs and bear shepherding as a bear management tool, trapping, relocating and radio tracking grizzly bears and black bears, educating visitors of public lands on avoiding bear-human conflicts, and working with private landowners to address the same. During the winter while the bears denned, Angela was employed by the institute as bookkeeper and office manager. In addition, she worked as a biological science technician in Grand Teton National Park and as a private contractor for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. During much of that time, Angela has moonlighted as bookkeeper for two Missoula-based non-profit organizations for over five years and most recently worked as an accountant for the largest real estate firm in Montana. When not home gardening with her husband and three cats she is out hiking, biking or enjoying the rivers around Missoula.

Andrea Leggitt - Graphic Designer

andrealeggitt.jpgOriginally from Phoenix, Arizona, Andrea Leggitt graduated Magna Cum Laude from Arizona State University with a B. S. in Industrial Design.  Coming from a family ripe with architects, graphic designers, art teachers, illustrators, painters, and one collage artist, she grew up around all things design and has worked as a freelance designer in New York and Arizona. After a triumphant tangle with cancer, Andrea’s interest shifted from simply designing pretty objects to more socially and environmentally responsible design.  Andrea, after being "bitten by the biomimicry bug," interned at the Biomimicry Institute for a summer and has since been brought on as a designer, helping to explain biomimicry through design concepts and infographics.  When not drawing dandelions for TBI, Andrea can be found zipping around on her baby blue road bike, spoiling her dog, and nurturing her side project of laser cut mobiles, SaltyandSweet.

Chris Allen - AskNature Manager

Chris Allen Chris serves as the manager of the Biomimicry Design Portal project. Chris has twenty years experience providing strategy and management services to private sector, public agency, and nonprofit clients.  Specializing in research and analysis, strategic planning, and sustainable development, he hold’s a degree in International Business from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

He has designed, developed, and managed projects fora variety of private sector clients as well as the US Department of Energy, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, the Northwest Area Foundation, and the United Nations Man and Biosphere Program. His international experience includes work and studies in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Mexico. He also serves on the Board of Directors of A World Institute for Sustainable Humanity.

Tim Greiser - AskNature Technical Lead

Tim GreiserTim Greiser is the technical lead on the Ask Nature portal.  He is a Zend Certified Engineer with over ten years of experience in software development.  He is passionate and opinionated about open systems, iterative development, unit testing and loosely coupled architecture.  He is an active participant in several local technology clubs, including the Missoula Web Discussion Group, Missoula Ruby Users Group and Missoula Linux Users Group.  In his free time he enjoys creating electronic music, travel, hiking, kayaking, hunting and scuba diving.

Sherry Ritter - AskNature Editor & Biologist at the Design Table

sherry_small.jpgSherry digs deep into the multitude of strategies that nature practices all around her. A lover of science and sharing her time with children and adults in the field exploring plants, birds, and other wildlife, Sherry can't help but expound upon the exciting things that science is revealing every day. Sherry received her BS and MS in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked most of her career for state fish and wildlife agencies, and the Rocky Mountain Research Station's Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Research Project. Sherry is the author of a book, Lewis and Clark's Mountain Wilds, and numerous magazine articles about wildlife. In 2004, she became a barnacle, latching onto the Biomimicry Guild as a contractor, and cementing herself fully when hired as a Biologist at the Design Table in 2007. She's currently working for the Institute on AskNature content and editing.

Contractors

Dona Boggs - Development Officer

dona_small2.jpgDona has been involved in biological research and teaching for 28 years. As a government major at Harvard College she pursued her interests in international relations and economic development before turning to the natural sciences. After obtaining a PhD in Zoology from the University of Montana she was awarded two post doctoral fellowships in Physiology, first at Dartmouth Medical School and then at the University of Colorado School of Health Sciences. She returned to Montana to raise three sons, lots of hay, sheep and cattle, plus a few dogs, while continuing to conduct research in comparative animal physiology and teach at the University of Montana for 13 years as an adjunct and research professor. She moved to a tenure track position in Biology at Eastern Washington University for 11 years until retiring in 2008 to return to Missoula where she is a faculty affiliate in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Montana and investigator at the Flight Lab in addition to her development work with The Biomimicry Institute 

Dona was invited to serve as a Program Director and the Cluster Leader for the Physiological and Structural Systems cluster within the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems at the National Science Foundation from 2005-2007.  Her research and teaching in comparative animal physiology and biomechanics  has focused on adaptations of animals to extreme environments and interactions between locomotion and respiration, which took her to England,  Australia and New Zealand for collaborations as well as other parts of the world to participate in numerous symposia.  Her experience with grant writing, grant review and administration, teaching, and biological research combined with a long standing interest in biologically-inspired design, as well as conservation and the need to find new more sustainable approaches to human life on earth, make her a useful member of the TBI’s development team.  When not reading, writing, or working in the lab, Dona enjoys hiking, bicycling, cross-country skiing, woodturning, pine needle basketry, general carpentry, gardening, making music, and playing with her children and grandchildren.

Denise DeLuca - Outreach Contractor 

deluca.jpgDenise is a registered professional engineer in Montana and a LEED AP. Denise received her bachelors in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she grew up, and her masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Montana State University in Bozeman. Denise has over 15 years of experience in both the public and private sectors in projects related to surface and groundwater quantity and quality modeling and analyses, environmental compliance, alternative waste management, and green building strategies. Most recently, Denise has been dba Emergent Solutions, an independent consulting service which focuses on strategies for sustainability.

John English  - IT Specialist

john_english.gifJohn English assists the Institute with its computer-related needs. John has 15 years experience administering Linux and Windows Web server technologies. His scripting skills include Perl, PHP, ASP,Python, Bash and Rails. He has Web site design experience and is versed in HTML, CSS, MySQL, Apache, and IIS. He also possesses Website marketing and usability skills. His latest obsession is XML/XSL programming and its application toward RSS feeds and Content Management Systems. Currently he is employed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology and serves on the board of the George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Emily Harrington - AskNature Illustrator & Visual Strategist

emily_small.jpgEmily has happily returned to the mountains of Montana where she was born. She brings with her 6 years of graphic design experience and a recently completed masters certificate in science illustration. Emily received her BA in biology from Colorado College, and an associates degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Colorado. She spent the next several years as a graphic designer for the Denver Botanic Gardens then moved back to Montana to begin a freelance graphic design business in Bozeman. Her clients included a broad range of non-profit science and educational groups as well as small businesses. From these clients, Emily discovered the need for good, clear and inspiring visual science information. With that in mind, she spent the last year training as a science illustrator with the unique program at University of California Santa Cruz Extension. She sees her role as a the middle person between the scientists and the public, conveying the excitement and the information of our discoveries and the hope that nature has solutions. When not puzzling over science, Emily spends her time running with her chocolate lab, biking, hiking and reading.

Jen Hubber - Communications Consultant

hubber_headshot.jpgJen is a graduate of the University of Montana where she received a bachelor's degree in Biology and a minor in Microbiology, as well as graduating through the honors program as a Presidential Leadership Scholar. She enjoys helping the Institute with content and editing on AskNature, and learning more about the exciting world of biomimicry. She is passionate about infectious disease research and is in pursuit of a graduate education in public health. Jen is a fervent supporter of Locks of Love, and through several haircuts has donated her height in hair over the last 7 years.

 
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