Simone Lightfoot brings decades of authentic and transformational conservation, energy, environmental, education, logistics, public policy, and justice experience to her projects and partnerships (clients). Simone served over thirteen years with the nation’s largest and most trusted conservation organization, the National Wildlife Federation. She is the immediate past Associate Vice President of Environmental Justice and Climate Justice. A civil rights leader, Simone spent over twenty years serving at the national, state, and local level of the NAACP leading policy, voting, energy, and climate efforts.
Sherry Fleming and her husband Ted live on a small homestead in rural NW Ohio, where they raised their two children.
Twenty five years ago, Sherry and other members of their community began organizing to protect themselves and the environment from the impacts of factory farms. In 2006, she helped found the grassroots citizen group, the Williams County Alliance, whose mission is to protect and advocate for the environment and promote a sustainable future.
Since that time, she has worked at the state and local level on issues involving environmental justice, local food networks, water quality, industrial scale agriculture, fracking, rights of nature and water privatization. Sherry currently serves as chair of the Williams County Alliance, board member for the Ohio Community Rights Network and coordinator for the Bryan Co-op.
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Susan P. Gateley is an Upstate New York native, ichthyoplankton taxonomist, and author of multiple books on Lake Ontario including Legends and Lore of Lake Ontario, Saving the Beautiful Lake, and Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario. She has an MS in fisheries and has been a sailor, educator and Great Lake advocate for half a century.
Jill Ryan received her bachelor’s degree in biology from Grand Valley State University in Michigan, her master’s degree in zoology from the University of Maine, and her law degree from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. She has a background in nonprofit management and capacity building, environmental toxicology, and human services, and has taught environmental law and legal research. Jill has held positions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is now the Executive Director of Freshwater Future, where she has been since 2000. In addition to building Freshwater Future, Jill’s passion focuses on increasing grassroots capacity to protect waters in the Great Lakes region, including assisting with a variety of planning processes, board development, facilitation and bi-national collaborative efforts. She serves on the Healing Our Waters Governance Board, helped spur creation of the growing Great Lakes Network and monitors emerging issues in the region. Jill enjoys paddling, cycling and camping with her family who reside in Muskegon, Michigan.
Alexis started working part-time as an intern for Freshwater Future in June of 2019. She helped with the launch and testing of Freshwater Future’s storm-water tracking app, assisted with organizing and managing databases, and engaged Toledo community youth in water education and activities. Prior to her intern work for Freshwater Future, Alexis worked 18 months in the spine orthopedics industry at Life Spine Inc. as a project engineer intern while completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Toledo. She later graduated from the University of Toledo with a B.S. in Bioengineering in May 2019. She currently works for Freshwater Future full-time focused on Lake Erie advocacy, community engagement, coaching and consulting, as well as supporting Freshwater Future in all of its technology needs. In her spare time, Alexis enjoys watching movies, listening to music, gaming, dancing, writing poetry, and spending time with her family and friends.
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