Lisa Diehl
is currently working as a freelance consultant and volunteers as the Advocacy Director of West Virginia Women Work! Lisa has been a long time advocate for women on issues related to nontraditional employment, economic justice, self-sufficiency, and poverty. She also works with a variety of organizations such as the West Virginia Welfare Reform Coalition’s advocacy committee, the West Virginia Environmental Council, the WV Highlands Conservancy, the WV Women’s Commission, and the Coalition for WV Women.
She sits on the Board of the Good News Mountaineer Garage, located in Charleston, WV that provides cars for low-income families. Lisa served two terms as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Network of Forest Practitioners (NNFP). While on the NNFP Board, she held the position of Treasurer/Secretary, and Vice-President during her tenure. Lisa is currently involved with the NNFP’s Appalachian Forest Resource Center, and serves on the Bio regional Advisory Committee.
As a member of the Advocacy Institute’s Strategic Advisory Committee, she participated in conducting an analysis of the social justice nonprofit sector, and from 2000-2003 acted as a consultant for a national project of the Advocacy Institute, Leadership for a Changing World. She has also participated as a member of the planning committee for the Center for Policy Alternatives annual Grassroots Women’s Leadership Retreat, 1999-2002.
She is a member of the WV Highlands Conservancy’s and in 2002, working with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation in Washington, DC, Redwood Community Action Agency in Eureka, CA, and Rural Action in Trimble, OH, she helped organize the first workshop for Community Action Agencies, and watershed groups interested in ecosystem workforce development in Central Appalachia. Currently, she is working with Wider Opportunities for Women assisting them in examining the natural resources sector, and employment choices in the field, and with Rural Action on a Citizen Based Monitoring Conference to be held in November. Lisa lives on a 120-acre farm in rural, Ritchie County West Virginia with her partner Ron, and a variety of animals.
Ginger Deason just moved to Charlottesville, VA in September ’09 from Raleigh, NC where she had been living for almost nine years. For four years she has been a Field Coordinator for Heifer International’s USA Country Program. In this position she worked with community groups (predominantly underserved communities) who are interested in working together to better their communities through sustainable livestock and agriculture projects. She facilitated meetings and a participatory planning process to develop a proposal, and with groups that already had projects assisted them with monitoring and evaluation, budget tracking, and report-writing.
Over the past 10 years she has worked with non-profit organizations and federal and state agencies in community development, training, and outreach, all centered around sustainable management of natural resources and environmental education. She really enjoys stand-up training and working with groups. Ginger holds a Master of Natural Resource Management from North Carolina State University and a BA in Spanish from Auburn University. She is originally from Alabama but has lived most of her life in the Southeastern US.
Amadou Diop is a native of Senegal, West Africa. He studied in Tunisia, North Africa where he received his BS in agricultural sciences and his first MS in animal sciences. In August of 1999, he came to the US to pursue graduate studies in agricultural and resource economics at Tuskegee University. Amadou obtained his second MS in the summer of 2000 and started working at Tuskegee University as a research and teaching assistant. While in Tuskegee, Amadou was involved with the Rural Business and Economic Development Program (RBEDP) where he worked with a multidisciplinary team to prepare cash flow and market analysis, enterprise budgeting, and developed business plans for small business owners in Alabama Black Belt counties.
Amadou was also involved with the George Washington Carver Experiment Station in a US Forest Service Project aimed to characterize under served Forest land owners in the Black Belt. In March 2002, Amadou joined the Federation of Southern Cooperatives as the Forestry Program Director where he coordinates all the forestry related projects for the FSC/LAF and manages the Ford Foundation funded “Community Based Forestry Demonstration” program.
Amadou, currently serves in the Alabama Forestry commission Advisory Council and the advisory board of the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference (PAWC). Additionally, he is a member of the American Agricultural Economic Association (AAEA) and Committee on the Opportunities and Status of Blacks in Agricultural Economics (COSBAE).
Rory Fenton Fraser is an Associate Professor of Forestry Policy/ Economics at Alabama A&M University. He earned a B.S. degree in Forest Management from The University of New Brunswick, a M.S. degree in Forest Resources Management from Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Forest Resources Management from Penn State University. His research interests are forest landowner assistance, community forestry, economic development, and under-served landowners.
His current research projects include, Targeting Landowner Assistance Programs to Improve Forest Management on Non-Industrial Private Forest lands, Non-profit Organizations and Community Forestry, Socioeconomic Characteristics of Under-served Landowners in Rural Alabama, and African-Americans and the Wood Products Industry. Rory serves on the advisory committee of the NNFP National Community Forestry Center’s Appalachian Forest Resource Center.
Sandra Denyce Jones is an independent rural community development consultant, primarily working with African-American landowners and communities with low-incomes to preserve the culture and environment while providing economic opportunity and an improved quality of life. Following her seven year tenure as Director of the Land Use & Environmental Education Program at Penn Center after her return to South Carolina in 1996, currently her major efforts are focused on Community-Based Forestry within the context of land ownership retention and asset based sustainable development.
Before joining the Penn Center staff, she served as a Legal Services attorney for 17 years in South Carolina and California, most recently at the National Housing Law Project in Oakland, specializing in community economic development, consumer, and housing issues. In response to Hurricane Hugo and the Loma Prieta earthquake, she established the National Legal Services Disaster Relief Task Force in 1989. Sandra co-founded the Center for Choice in Housing in 1994 and is a founding board member of the Fund for Southern Communities and the Black Family Land Trust.
A native of St. Louis and a fourth generation Arkansas family farming daughter, she received her BS as a member of the first graduating class of African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University, and her JD at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Sandra serves as a board member of the National Network of Forest Practitioners and the South Carolina Association of Cooperatives and Farmers. She is a twenty-four year member of the South Carolina Bar Association and serves as an advisor to the Center for Minority Land and Community Security. She also serves on the selection committee for the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference and is a member of the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
Ruth McWilliams is a native of Northern New York, raised on a family-owned dairy farm in St. Lawrence County. After many years of living and working in the Washington, DC area Ruth and her husband own and manage Catamount Lodge & Forest LLC in South Colton, New York. The property is located in the Raquette River corridor and inside the Adirondack Park which includes a mix of public and private lands, affording Ruth the opportunity to work locally and regionally on diverse conservation and development issues.
Through Catamount and associated activities Ruth advocates sustainable approaches to natural resource management and community development, partnering with a variety of organizations. Her interest and expertise has been shaped by 30 years of public service in the rural development, marketing and inspection, and natural resource arenas of the US Department of Agriculture. At the time of her retirement from the federal government in September 2008 she was the National Sustainable Development Coordinator for the US Forest Service (FS). In this role Ruth helped connect domestic and international commitments of the federal government and helped link the FS’s natural resource management responsibilities with its day-to-day operations and resource consumption.
John Squires lives in the rugged cascade mountains of Washington State in the small town of Packwood just a short distance from Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens. John spends his time with his wife Elizabeth and his daughters, Brooke E. and Zoe, camping and fishing in the outdoor recreational paradise of the southern Washington Cascades. John has also been to known to catch a salmon or more from the nearby Cowlitz River that flows just a few hundred yards from his home. John is a Forest Practitioner and spends many of his workdays in the woods with his trusty Stihl Chainsaw and his dented up ford pickup truck.
John was instrumental in the restoration of salmonids to the Cowlitz River in the 90’s which had been extirpated by the building of dams in the 60’s. As a member of Friends of the Cowlitz he participated in forcing through the courts Government agencies, utilities and the dams owners to restore wild Salmonids to the Cowlitz River after a 30 year absence. Now Chinook, Coho, Steelhead, and Sea-run Cutthroat swim and spawn in the 246 miles of streams above the dams.
John is a Charter member of 2 Forest Service advisory committees. His task in one of the Committees is to advise on the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan and in the other to make recommendations on the allocation funds for restoration projects under the authority of the County Payments Act. John also is a charter member of Destination Packwood Association which was formed after our communities only source of jobs Packwood Lumber Mill closed. DPA’s goal is to look at ways to bring jobs to the community and diversify our economy.
John also is a Charter member and President of the Pinchot Partnership a collaborative group composed of local community members, environmentalists, tribal interests, labor, timber interests, and private forest land owners. The goal is to provide jobs for local communities through restoration activities and sustainable timber harvest in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Before the forming of the Pinchot Partnership lawsuits, injunctions, strife, turmoil and gridlock gripped the National Forest. Since the Partnership formed there have been no lawsuits or injunctions and work in the woods is resuming. The partnership has sponsored a number of collaborative projects some using stewardship authorities that are restoring natural functions while creating local jobs. Collaboration instead of confrontation is proving to be the solution to preserve the environment as well as preserving local communities.
John also is a member of the Rural Voice for Conservation Coalition which dialogues with FS officials and Congress in DC raising policy issues that need to be addressed to preserve rural communities and the environment. This coalition gives a high profile voice to rural communities that aren’t often heard and their policy issues rarely addressed. The NNFP could be instrumental in disseminating this model nationwide, so rural areas that are overlooked can have a voice and participate in the political process.
John appreciates the unique opportunity that the NNFP provides for networking with other rural folks nationwide and learning from their experiences. He was particularly attracted to the social justice emphasis of the NNFP and believes that if we all work together we can ensure that Forest Practitioners are treated better than they are now.
Frank L. Taylor, a private landowner, is a native of the unincorporated town of Greensboro, in Winston County, Mississippi. He is a volunteer with the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, a state association of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/ Land Assistance Fund (FSC/LAF). He currently serves as President of Winston County Self-Help Cooperative, Inc., a group of small and under-served farmers in Winston County that had experienced problems with land loss, lack of sufficient income from their farming operation, and lack of market opportunities.
Linda Thornton
Tamara Walkingstick is an extension specialist in forestry with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service and President of the Arkansas Urban Forestry Council. She works with non-industrial private foresters throughout the state and also works to foster better connections between communities and natural resource professionals and agencies, particularly the U.S. Forest Service.
Her initial work in community forestry was in Nepal, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s. She has a master's degree from Oklahoma State University and a doctorate in forest economics from Auburn University, where she focused on the impacts of industrial forestry on communities. Tamara’s areas of interest include the sociology of natural resources, non-industrial private forest landowner issues (such as landowner education), and natural resource policy. She has spoken on several panels at NNFP meetings and wrote an article for the NNFP newsletter Practitioner.
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