Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D. is Chair and a co-founder of C&NN.  Founding Director of the University of Minnesota’s ground-breaking Children, Youth & Family Consortium, and now serving as Consultant and Director Emeritus, Marti Erickson is well-known for her research and writing on parent-child attachment, children’s mental health, and strategies for working with high-risk children and families. Marti is a popular speaker throughout the U.S. and abroad and has been honored by state and national organizations for her outstanding contributions to psychology. With an interest in translating research for general audiences, Marti also appears weekly on Twin Cities television and hosts a weekly radio show, “Good Enough Moms,” with her daughter, Erin Erickson Garner. Marti is passionate about the role of nature in children’s development and hopes to spur not only a movement to reunite children with the natural world, but also more rigorous, extensive research on this critical topic in human development. A developmental psychologist specializing in parent-child attachment, child abuse prevention, and children’s mental health, Marti is a well-known speaker and author in those fields.

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Yusuf Burgess serves as the current Chairperson of the Environmental Awareness Network for Diversity in Conservation (EANDC). He is the Parent Intervention Specialist at the Green Tech High Charter School in Albany, New York. Yusuf is a founding member of the New York State Outdoor Education Association Diversity Committee and a member of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks. He is also a member of the Albany School District’s Youth Safety Task Force, a collaborator on Youth Violence Intervention Conferencing, a participant in the Albany City School District’s Strategic Planning Committee and a friend and mentor to many youth from elementary school to college. As a concerned and dedicated youth professional he exposes young people to the natural world with engaging outdoor recreation activities.  Brother Yusuf, as most folks call him, is a former Environmental Educator for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation where he coordinated the DEC Diversity Program and was responsible for an urban outreach to increase the diversity of their Summer Youth Environmental Education Camps.

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Howard Frumkin, Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, serves as C&NN’s Vice Chair. Formerly Director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist.  From 2005 to 2010 he directed the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC.  Previously, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School.  He currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine.  He was named Environmental Professional of the Year by the Georgia Environmental Council in 2004.  He is the author or co-author of over 180 scientific journal articles and chapters, and 5 books.  Dr. Frumkin received his A.B. from Brown University, his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. from Harvard, his Internal Medicine training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge Hospital, and his Occupational Medicine training at Harvard.  He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Occupational Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Collegium Ramazzini and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

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Fran Mainella is a Visiting Scholar at Clemson University Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, serves as C&NN’s Treasurer.  Previously, Mainella completed nearly six years as the 16th Director and the first woman to lead the National Park Service.  Mainella served twelve years as Director of Florida’s State Parks.  She has also served as executive director of the Florida Recreation and Park Association and as president of both the National Recreation and Park Association and the National Association of State Park Directors.  Mainella is the recipient of the Walter T. Cox Award, the Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award, the William Penn Mott, Jr. Award, and the 2007 Pugsley Award. Most recently she was selected as the Metcalf Lecturer for SUNY- Cortland and first ever Ralph Steele Lecturer for East Carolina University.  Mainella is currently a member of Newsweek Magazine’s Environmental Advisory Board, a fellow of the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration, member of the National Park Trust, Chair of the National Recreation and Park Foundation, Co-chair of the US Play Coalition, and a national speaker on Nature-Deficit Disorder, Play and Parks and Recreation.  Mainella holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut, a master’s degree, and an honorary doctorate from Central Connecticut State College.

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Director Betsy Townsend also serves as the Secretary of C&NN’s Board of Directors.  She is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Leave No Child Inside - Greater Cincinnati (LNCIgc), a collaborative of organizations and individuals educating the community that time spent in nature is essential to physical, mental and emotional health of all children. Betsy is also on the Board of Directors of the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati, and represents LNCIgc on the Cross Boundary Leadership Team for Community Learning Centers in Cincinnati. A successful business person and community leader for decades, she brings a wealth of practical community-based wisdom and insights to the children and nature movement. LNCIgc has served as an important model for regional campaigns across North America. Her advice is often sought by cities and states, public officials and members of the business community in the development of these campaigns.

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Mohammed is Principal and CEO of LSE Architects, a Minneapolis-based firm doing work across the U.S. In 1994, Mohammed founded the Architectural Youth Program (AYP), a highly successful program to mentor urban youth in architecture. Mohammed has received numerous awards, including the prestigious National American Institute of Architects (AIA) Young Architect Award. An innovative leader in sustainable design, Mohammed has been the architect on many LEED certified buildings, including the first LEED certified building in Minnesota. Mohammed currently is the principal architect designing a new nature-centered facility to house Washburn Center for Children, Minnesota’s largest and most celebrated children’s mental health agency, serving children and families for 128 years. (Richard Louv is a consultant on that project and Marti Erickson, a past President of Washburn Center, is assisting with the capital campaign.) Mohammed lives in Minneapolis with his wife Julie and their three children, ages 7 to 19. He is pleased and honored to be invited to serve on C&NN’s Board of Directors.

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Richard Louv is Chairman Emeritus and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network and the author of seven books, including his most recent, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin). He is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal. Past recipients have included Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson and Jimmy Carter. He has served as an adviser to the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award program, is a member of the Citistates Group, appears often on national radio and television programs, and speaks frequently in the United States and overseas. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers and magazines, and was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and Parents magazine. Married to Kathy Frederick Louv, he is the father of two young men, Jason and Matthew. He is working on his eighth book, but would rather be fishing.

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Cheryl Charles, Ph.D., is President, CEO, and co-founder of C&NN. Cheryl is an innovator, entrepreneur, author, and educator who is among those instrumental in developing the worldwide movement to reconnect children and nature. She is the former founding national director of Project Learning Tree and Project WILD, the two most widely used environment education programs for K-12 educators in North America. She is Assistant Deputy Chairman for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s www.iucn.org Commission on Education and Communication.  Cheryl is also Managing Partner of Hawksong Associates www.hawksongassociates.com, a consulting firm specializing in organizational development and diffusion of innovation. Cheryl’s most recent book, with her husband, Bob Samples, is Coming Home:  Community, Creativity and Consciousness (2004). Cheryl has a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Washington with a specialty in factors affecting the achievement of minority youth. She speaks internationally about the benefits of nature to children.

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Martin LeBlanc is national youth education director for the Sierra Club, where he oversees the organization’s youth programs and advocacy efforts relating to children and nature. His advocacy work has been focused, for the most part, on California, New Mexico and Washington State, as well as at the federal level. Martin also has been instrumental in forming partnerships with military and health organizations around the issue of children and nature. He was a founding board member of the Children and Nature Network. Previously, Martin worked as an outdoor educator in Seattle, and served as an outdoor-education advocate for Texas Parks and Wildlife in Austin, Texas. He is currently chairman of the No Child Left Inside committee in Washington State, as well as a member of the North American Association for Environmental Education’s Advocacy Committee. Martin believes that “the next generation of American children deserves a special place in nature so they can be empowered to solve the environmental challenges of the future.”

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Amy Pertschuk is C&NN’s Director of Network Communications and co-founder of C&NN. She is an award winning designer and internet entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in information design and technology. In 1991 she co-founded Communication Wave (C-Wave) a multi-media design studio with a focus on natural history museums and aquariums. C-Wave’s client list includes the American Museum of Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, SFMOMA, Scholastic, Apple, Adobe, and Hasboro. In 1998, she co-founded eNature.com ,the Web’s premier online nature-discovery resource. Pertschuk designed and developed C&NN’s online strategy and continues to manage the ever-expanding Web site and social media resources to serve the needs of the growing children and nature movement. She is currently serving as C&NN’s Director of Network Communications and is part of the strategic planning and implementation team. She also serves as a member of the board of directors for Hooked on Nature and is chair of the garden committee at Willow Creek Academy, the local public charter school.

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Stephen R. Kellert is the Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is also Executive Chairman of Bio-Logical Capital, a firm that invests in and implements multi-layer sustainable land uses on large landscapes.  Additionally, he was a founding Partner and now is a senior consultant in the company, Environment Capital Partners.  His work focuses on understanding the connection between human and natural systems with a particular interest in the value and conservation of nature and designing ways to harmonize the natural and human built environments. He has served on committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been a member of the board of directors of many organizations. He has authored more than 150 publications, including Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Foundations (with P. Kahn, Jr., MIT Press, 2002). Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, co-edited with J. Heerwagen and M. Mador, was published in 2008.

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John Parr was a co-founder of CIVIC RESULTS, a non-profit organization that assists governments, businesses and non-profit institutions to collaboratively plan and implement initiatives that create measurable change in the physical, social, civic and human infrastructure of communities and regions.

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