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Board of Directors
MEIC's Board of Directors
The board of directors has complete legal control of MEIC and overall responsibility for its well-being and success.
- Roger Sullivan, President (Kalispell)
- Zack Winestine, Vice President (New York City)
- Ken Wallace, Treasurer (Helena)
- Gary Aitken, Secretary (Ovando)
- Anne Johnson, (Bozeman)
- Paul Edwards (Missoula)
- Mark Gerlach (Missoula)
- Stephanie Kowals (Seattle)
- Steve Scarff (Bozeman)
- Steve Gilbert (Helena)
- Myla Kelly (Bozeman)
- Tom Steenberg (Missoula)
- Michelle Tafoya (Whitefish)
Roger is an attorney whose law practice has for a number of years included environmental, land use, and public policy issues. He has regularly advocated on behalf of such issues in the courtroom and occasionally at the legislature.
Roger has been an MEIC member for many years, appreciating its efforts to protect Montana’s environmental quality and occasionally assisting in those efforts. Perhaps stimulated by the birth of his first grandchild, he finds himself even more drawn to protecting the environment for this and future generations.
Zack Winestine (New York City), Vice President
Zack’s family extends back four generations in Helena, MT, and the extraordinary uniqueness of Montana’s wild places were made vivid to him as a child. Zack and his wife have a cabin north of Helena and spend as much time in Montana’s backcountry as they can.
Zack has been active in community organizing around land-use, zoning, and development issues since 1993, serving as President of West Villagers for Responsible Development from 1994-2000, and Co-Chair of the Greenwich Village Community Task Force from 1994 to the present.
Over the past eight years Zack has also been active in the anti-corporate globalization movement, which has provided him with extensive experience in consensus decision making and working with diverse groups of people to find agreement on tactics and goals. He recently completed a feature-length documentary film about a bicycle caravan traveling across Europe to join protests against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague.
Ken Wallace (Helena), Treasurer
Ken is a geologist who has worked for more than 23 years on environmental projects: regulatory analysis, ground water contamination, Superfund sites, mine waste reclamation, oil and gas waste remediation, and others. Most of Ken’s recent work has been evaluating impacts associated with projects falling under jurisdiction of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Ken is committed to volunteer advocacy, and has served on the boards of several local and regional non-profit environmental groups. He is particularly interested in working on water quality protection, limiting population growth, renewable energy, emerging health risks, local zoning and land use regulations, and protection of the Continental Divide. Ken currently serves on the Lewis and Clark City-County Board of Health, and represents the Board of Health on the Water Quality Protection District Board.
Gary Aitken (Ovando), Secretary
Gary grew up in the soggy Pacific Northwest, falling into rivers and tumbling down snowfields. He spent twenty years in Colorado raising sheep and writing computer software. A Montana resident since 1992, he began telecommuting from a trashed out mobile home with the phone outside under an antifreeze can nailed to a tree stump. Along the way he has spent a lot of time exploring crazy places by various non-motorized means.
Somewhat of a minimalist, he gets pretty pissed off at corporate and personal greed, and would love nothing more than to overturn the 1886 non-ruling by the Supreme Court which effectively granted "personhood" to corporations.
Gary has always felt that we have an obligation to leave this place in better shape than when we arrived, and is disgusted with our record in that regard. In the last forty years we have missed huge opportunities and squandered much of our natural wealth, things which have cost us dearly in the long run.
Gary would like to help MEIC and Montana citizens forcefully and without compromise reassert their right to a clean and healthy environment, one they can pass down to future generations with pride.
Anne Johnson, (Bozeman)
The first non-profit Anne joined was MEIC back in its earliest days and she’s been a member ever since. Born and raised in Montana, Anne’s been involved in environmental issues for over 35 years; environmental non-profit administration and management for 12 years; board service for 10 years. She’s currently the Human Resource Manager at the Community Food Co-op in Bozeman. Anne holds degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Adult Education and is pleased to bring her passion for fair play and respect for the natural world and its systems to the MEIC board.
Paul EdwardsPaul Edwards is a lifelong opponent of exploitative, predatory Corporate Capitalism that has raped and robbed the West from the first white influx to today, and criminally created the current wholesale meltdown of the American economy.
He is, for the same reasons, a radical environmentalist who knows legislated wilderness is the only way to check that rapacity and to preserve the most valuable assets Montanans still possess: the last of its wild land, relatively pure air, and what is left of its clean water.
Mark Gerlach (Missoula)
Mark has had an association with MEIC since 1975. He lived in the Blackfoot River Valley for 35 years; the first 20 years in the Lincoln Valley at the headwaters, and then 15 years in the Greenough Valley in the middle reaches of the Blackfoot. Twenty-five of the years were spent as a ranch hand and ranch manager, while the other 10 years included working for the U.S. Forest Service; as a logger and horse logger; and as a sawmill owner and operator. He has often called upon MEIC’s resources and expertise to help in current and historic mining issues, in water quality issues, and in the arenas of State and federal politics.
Having chosen to to live in rural Montana, Mark believes that Quality of Life is the first paycheck, and in his experience, MEIC is at the pinnacle of all environmental and conservation organizations in helping to recover and maintain the criteria of his definition of Quality of Life.
Stephanie Kowals (Seattle)
In the summer of 1975 Stephanie came to Montana for the first time. She had never been somewhere where she felt as comfortable as in the Blackfoot Valley. After returning to Seattle and graduating from college, she related the story of her summer in Montana to her grandfather. Much to her surprise, his response was “I’m from there.” Stephanie learned that her family had homesteaded, mostly in the Ovando area, from about 1870 to 1930. Eventually the thousands of acres of ranchland were sold off, leaving just one lot in the town of Ovando.
Today Stephanie still lives in Seattle, but her forebears rest in the Ovando cemetery; the connection to the place is reinforced every visit. She feels strongly that protecting, preserving, and restoring the Blackfoot Valley and Montana is not something that can wait. It has not been an easy fight and promises to get only more difficult as corporate pressure for resource extraction escalates in the guise of economic promise. For Stephanie, that’s equivalent to trading our offspring’s legacy for a few shortsighted dollars.
Steve moved to Montana in 1988. He was born in Iowa, got his B.S. in general science and psychology from the University of Iowa, then worked in construction for a few years. An early member of Friends of the Earth, he has long admired the work of David Brower and Amory Lovins. He also joined some state and local groups and worked on environmental and energy issues.
Upon arriving in Montana, Steve and his wife spent two years in Billings, then settled in Bozeman, where they raised two children. The whole family has a great appreciation for Montana's clean air, clean water, and natural beauty. Steve studied computer science at Montana State University, and has worked as programmer for ten years. Since joining the board, he's been happy to use his computer skills for the benefit of MEIC.
When he's not on a computer, Steve has a few hobbies. He has explored many wild caves, mostly in his wild younger days. He learned to ski after moving to Montana, and has recently taken up snowboarding after prodding and lessons from his daughter. During the warmer months he enjoys camping, hiking in the woods, and hunting mushrooms. He also plays a fair game of chess, runs a chess club, and organizes and directs tournaments.
Steve's primary reason for joining MEIC is his concern about global warming. He believes rapid climate change threatens to destroy not only Earth's biological diversity, but also human civilization. He wants people and governments the world over to realize the magnitude of the threat and to take action before it's too late. Steve believes that along with protecting our clean water and our right to a healthy environment, MEIC accomplishes more in the fight against global warming than any organization in the state.
Steve Gilbert has been a Montana resident since 1967. For 41 of these years he has worked as a biological consultant, 25 of which he was part-owner and president of an environmental consulting company that specialized in wildlife, aquatics/fisheries, soils, vegetation, forestry, range and hydrology. Separate from his business, Steve worked in Alaska on salmon studies, Yellowstone Park on grizzly bears, the Teton Wilderness on an early satellite/radio-telemetry study with elk, did wildlife inventories in the North Cascades and Pasayten Wilderness in Washington, studied Icelandic gulls on Baffin Island, NWT and cliff-nesting raptors in Glacier Park. He is an associate with the Montana Peregrine Institute, and has conducted neo-tropical bird and raptor surveys in the west nearly every year since 1971.
Steve is a strong environmental advocate and served for a number of years on the board of the Billings-based Northern Plains Resource Council. He has been on the Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) board for over ten years and was chosen the MEIC Community Activist of the Year in 2003. For several years he was the token male on the board of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a national organization based in Durango, Colorado. He’s also on the board of Western Lands Project in Seattle. He has testified in the Montana Legislature and U.S. Senate on water and air quality, soils, aquatics and wildlife habitat issues relating to irresponsible energy development, coal and hard-rock mines.
After growing up in New England, and just hours after graduation from Tufts University in Biology/Environmental Science, Myla and her husband-to-be and left for Montana. Our tiny Ford Escort held all of our possessions with room to spare. We captained antique boats and gave naturalist tours on the lakes of Glacier National Park. With Glacier as our introduction to Montana, we were destined to never leave.
Myla earned her Masters degree in Forestry/Resource Conservation from the University of Montana and has used that educational background in a career as an ecologist/environmental consultant/ program manager. She is currently the coordinator of the Peaks to Prairies Pollution Prevention Center at Montana State University, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, to develop projects that prevent pollution. Myla has worked with diverse stakeholder groups in their efforts to restore Montana watersheds, including the Blackfoot Challenge, Big Hole Watershed Council, and the Greater Gallatin Watershed Council. She co-founded the Gallatin Zero Waste Coalition, which is pushing Gallatin County to improve its recycling and waste reduction efforts. Myla is also an environmental representative on the Gallatin National Forest Resource Advisory Council.
Montana is home to Myla and her Husband Mike and to their three children Madeline, Miles and Mason.
I recently retired after working for 25 years in public safety with the City of Missoula Fire Department. I appreciate and value the rewards that come from working for the public good and welfare.
I also love and cherish the magnificent natural environment we are blessed with in Montana and take every opportunity to recreate on our rivers and lakes, in our mountains and parks. I consider it our responsibility to work to preserve our beautiful Treasure State.
I believe MEIC is at the forefront of protecting the public interest in clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment; in a nutshell -- leaving this place better than we found it.
I believe that MEIC is one of the most effective environmental organizations in Montana. I have worked with some of the staff over the years and have found them always to be well-informed and committed to their work.
I have been coming out to Montana since 2001 and have lived permanently in Whitefish for five years. There are many places in Montana that hold a special place in my heart, but Glacier National Park holds the top spot. I consult for various organizations and am in the process of completing my graduate degree in Environmental Policy and Management from the University of Denver. I hope to contribute to MEIC’s efforts to protect our right to a clean and healthful environment through my experience working on clean energy and climate change campaigns.