Hard working members and volunteers are dedicated to creating a better future for birds, their habitats, and the people of Wisconsin.
Get to know our current board:
Jan marsh, president of the board since 2018, member since 1978
Jan is a lifelong resident of Milwaukee. For the last 29 years, she has worked for the United States Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 in Chicago. She has had various roles in planning, sustainability and international environmental protection, including work in Chile and Eastern Europe. For the last 12 years, she has worked in the Water Division with tribes and states to control nonpoint source pollution. She has also managed a number of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grants, including a number of them in the area. She has a BA and MS from UW-Milwaukee and post-graduate work at the University of Canberra. She had been active in MAS and the Schlitz Audubon Center in the 1980s and is enjoying her return to chapter service.
Jim at Orson Smith’s fifth birthday, explaining how bear teeth grow. Orson means “bear’s son.”
jim uhrinak, conservation chair, member since 1986
Jim has long tenure with the MAS Board of Directors and has led the Penokee Mountains Field Trip for 30 years. He and Richard Barloga wrote the land narrative and botanical inventories that protected the type-site of Milwaukee’s lake forest. Jim serves on the Steering Committee of the Niagara Escarpment Resource Network (NERN) and works on land protection, education, and savanna restoration over a wide geography. One of his great joys is Buffalo Speaks Reserve, a Milwaukee Audubon heritage site at eastern Wisconsin’s prairie-forest border on the escarpment near Horicon Marsh. Jim works as a Consulting Arborist, was hired by Animal Planet as a mountain lion tracker, and is an International Oak Society life member. Jim is actively researching the heraldic relationships between owls, falcons, cormorants, crested woodpeckers, prairie chickens and Indian peoples. Jim was on point for woodland grouse in 1958 and became a Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society charter member in 1972.
Delene Hanson, recording secretary since 2018, long-time member of audubon society
Delene holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from UWM and is a retired Small Business Administration Loan Officer. Her love of nature goes back to the many childhood days spent at the family cottage on Phantom Lake in Mukwonago where she spent many hours exploring and identifying birds, butterflies and plants with the field guides her parents provided. She is a strong advocate for native plants and is privileged to have learned from two of the very best---Randy Powers and the late Richard Barloga. Delene is a charter member of the Wild Ones Chapter at Wehr Nature Center, former chair of the Hales Corners Environmental Committee and one of the founders of the Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy. She is currently president of the Stahl-Conard Homestead, a historical site in Hales Corners with gardens demonstrating pre-settlement landscapes and focusing on transitions in the land. She is pleased to serve on the MAS board and looks forward to helping the organization to continue to grow.
Randy Powers, member since 2015
Randy is a reconstruction ecologist and nature photographer. He holds Masters degrees in Botany and Zoology and is the owner of Prairie Future Seed Company (1987). His educational background, coupled with decades of hands-on restoration experience, puts him in an elite class of botanists with both academic and real-world experience. Randy has been instrumental in land management planning at Buffalo Speaks and has trained dozens - if not hundreds - of field workers over the course of his career. He has a particular interest in pollinator biology and documentation of moth species.
Jill Robertson, board member since 2018
Jill Robertson, CPA/MST has worked as a corporate tax accountant for the last 28 years. She and her husband enjoy living on a fully wooded lot with a ravine on the north side of Milwaukee, in which there are often deer or turkeys right outside the window. She is an enthusiastic bird watcher and an avid supporter of conservation efforts.
Mike Sattell, board member since 2018
Mike Sattell, CPA/CFF, CFE has over 30 years’ experience helping not-for-profit organizations with compliance, governance, accounting, tax and strategic planning and currently is the President & CEO of Ovation Communities, a not-for-profit and faith based Greater Milwaukee-area Senior Living organization. Mike has been a frequent participant in the annual Penokees field trip and enjoys hiking and exploring the outdoors and native birds of Wisconsin. He and wife Lisa live near Southern Ozaukee County’s Fairy Chasms.
Matthew Smith
Tom Hayssen
Peter Thornquist, member since 2016, board member since 2018
Peter has a life-long fascination with natural history and people’s relationship to the environment. He started his career in anthropology and worked in various museums before focusing on health care. Peter strongly believes that healthy communities require healthy environments. Peter lives in the Milwaukee River valley and has focused his recent efforts on documenting the prehistory and natural history of the Greater Indian Prairie area. He has recorded over 100 species of birds in this area, over half of which migrate through the rain forests of Central America. Accordingly, he has cooperated with environmental groups in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala in preserving their natural areas.
Jim Price
Jim Price is a journalist and naturalist. He has helped Milwaukee Audubon in its efforts to preserve
Indian Prairie at the site of the Kletzsch Park dam. He has taught workshops on butterflies and on how Native Americans processed and wove milkweed fiber into cord.
Dennis Miller
Dennis Miller is a physician with a longstanding interest in the preservation of natural environments. He has worked for 12 years at a restoration of the native lake forest ecosystem on his wooded property on Lake Michigan in Whitefish Bay. It is an example of the feasibility of merging an aesthetic goal with the environmental imperative.
Maddy Reick
Maddy Reick is a prairie restorer. She has worked with Randy Powers to plan and seed the prairie plantings at Buffalo Speaks Preserve and will lead Milwaukee Audubon’s prairie expansion at Buffalo Speaks.
Terri Yoho
Terri Yoho served as Executive Director of the Kohler Foundation for 18 years. She managed the development and daily administration of the foundation’s programs and contributions in support of the arts and land, historic and art preservation. Terri has a long-standing interest in community service and education. She is a member of the Board of Curators of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and a member of its executive committee.
Maggie Szpot
Maggie Szpot is a graduate from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design with a degree in Fine Arts and a passion for Wisconsin’s native flora and fauna. Growing up in the Town of Cedarburg on a wooded lot surrounded by the natural world highly influenced her decision to pursue a career in the environmental field with a focus on ecological restoration. After beginning her career as a Land Steward intern at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, she joined the Natural Areas Program of Milwaukee County Parks to become a Field Technician for its 15,000 acres. Her work, and that of the Natural Areas Team, strongly focused on reducing invasive species and protecting endangered species. Currently, Maggie continues to assist in habitat restoration efforts with Milwaukee Public Schools and the Wisconsin DNR at Lakeshore State Park.