About Us
The Pajarito Environmental Education Center is operated by a Board of Directors, two staff members, and a corps of devoted volunteers. Feel free to contact any of us, or you may use the Contact page and your message will be sent to the relevant person(s).
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Diane Noveroske
662-0460 |
Diane attended both the University of Hawaii and the University of Nevada-Reno, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology. After graduation she moved to Los Alamos in 1979 with her husband, Evan, where they have raised their son. She worked in chemistry at LANL for 15 years, and then as an independent contractor for Los Alamos County and a teaching assistant at Pinon School. She started volunteering for PEEC in 2005 and was hired as PEEC's Administrative Assistant in 2006. Her appreciation for nature and concern for the environment began when she was in high school and first started bird watching. Since, she as been President of the Lahonton Audubon Society, done bird surveys for LANL, participated in the New Mexico Breeding Bird Atlas project, and, as a member of the Pajarito Ornithological Survey, helped gather data for the publication of LANL's "Atlas of Breeding Birds of Los Alamos County". Currently her interests are chairing the Los Alamos DWI Program, hiking, bird watching, reading, and movies. |
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Branden Willman-Kozimor
662-0460 |
Branden moved to Los Alamos in 2006 after spending several years in California where she co-founded a nonprofit organization that starts farmers markets in low-income communities and worked as the garden manager at an elementary school garden classroom program. She is interested in community food sustainability and place-based environmental education. In addition to working as PEEC's Program Coordinator she also started the organization's Kids Organic Garden in the summer of 2007. She enjoys traveling, working in her garden, cooking, playing and listening to music, crafting, hiking, biking, backpacking, and most anything else that gets her outside. Branden received her B.A. in Sociology and Human Services from Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO and her M.P.A. with an emphasis in Nonprofit Management from San Francisco State University. |
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Randy Ryti
662-7392 |
For more than 15 years Randy has been a partner in an environmental consulting company headquartered in Los Alamos. He holds a bachelor's degree in Biology from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Biology from UC San Diego. In Bozeman Montana, Randy was an adjunct member of the biology department at Montana State University where he conducted ecological research and taught courses on various environmental topics. Board Member since 2002. |
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Chick Keller
662-7915 |
Chick is a retired scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory. He came to Los Alamos as a graduate student in 1967 and became a permanent staff member in 1969 upon receiving his doctorate in Astronomy from Indiana University. Chick has had a life-long interest in things natural starting as director of the nature lodge at Hidden Valley Boy Scout Camp, Pennsylvania when he was 16. Chick's professional research has been heavily involved in climate studies and he has taught a course in this at UNM-LA many times. For many years he was director of the Lab's UC Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. Chick's non-professional passion is identifying native plants, leading to a herbarium collection of some 1500 specimens primarily from New Mexico and Colorado. Chick has been a frequent contributor to the Los Alamos Monitor of a column entitled "Wildflower Notes". Most recently he has begun the study of grasses concentrating on those growing in the recovering burn areas around town--both native and introduced. Chick and his wife, Yvonne, are avid birders and are part of the New Mexico Breeding Bird Atlas project with a study plot in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. This coming year (2003) Chick will be president of the New Mexico Native Plant Society's Santa Fe Chapter. Founding Board Member, 2000. |
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Felicia Orth
661-8530 |
Felicia is the New Mexico Environment Department Hearing Officer. She conducts permitting, adjudicatory and rulemaking hearings in air quality, solid waste, hazardous waste, liquid waste, ground water, surface water and construction programs. Previously, she worked in the Los Alamos County Attorney's Office, the NMED Office of General Counsel, and as an associate in a large law firm in the Midwest specializing in toxic tort litigation. Ms. Orth has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently serving on the Los Alamos Utilities Board. She and her husband and two sons have especially enjoyed the canyons in Los Alamos since moving here in 1996. She joined the board in the fall of 2006. |
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Hedy Dunn
672-3866 |
Hedy Dunn has an undergraduate degree from Newcomb College in New Orleans and an MAT from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She has been the director of the Los Alamos Historical Museum for 23 years. During that time she has directed its educational outreach programs, exhibit design and installation, grant-writing and administration, newsletter writing, editing and publishing, and has become thoroughly familiar with working for a non-profit organization and volunteer boards. She is eager to see the activities and facilities for an environmental group flourish in Los Alamos. Having lived in Los Alamos for 26 years, she and her family have enjoyed a myriad of outdoor activities from hiking and camping to cross-country skiing. She and her husband Skip have a particular interest in birds because Skip's sister Erica Dunn, an ornithologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service, is the founder of "Project Feeder Watch." Skip and Hedy are contributors to the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy and are pleased to support PEEC in Los Alamos. Board Memeber since 2002. |
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Becky Shankland
672-9106 |
Becky studied English literature at Harvard/Radcliffe, had a Fulbright in Bristol, England, and then received an M. A. T. at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught English in Massachusetts before moving to New Mexico and teaching for 17 years at Los Alamos High School. In her English classes she incorporated questions about the sustainability of civilizations. She retired in 1997. Becky has served as president of the League of Women Voters of Los Alamos. She's been on other boards: Vision 2020, the Open Space Advisory Committee, the Concert Association, and the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee. Current interests are writing about wildflowers, bird-watching, hiking, reading, solar energy, and traveling abroad and to see children and grandchildren in California. Founding Board Member, 2000. |
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Peter O'Rourke
663-0524 |
Peter O'Rourke obtained his PH.D. in Mechanical Engineering fromPrinceton University in 1980. He is currently retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked for 30 years in the Theoretical Division on computer simulations of fluid flows. He has been actively involved in Los Alamos Pathways Association, where he currently serves as treasurer, and the Los Alamos Bicycle Subcommittee, where he served for many years as chairman. He enjoys most of the outdoor activities available in the Los Alamos area, but particularly likes hiking and bicycling. Board Member since summer 2005. |
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Robert Dryja
661-9602 |
Robert Dryja has had an interest in biology since he was child in the Panama Canal Zone. When he was four years old, he was providing cutting ants with different types of leaves to see if they had a preference. As a teenager he had a pet boa constrictor which he fed hamburger with the help of his mother. Robert attended Tulane University, receiving both a bachelor and master's degree there. He later attended the University of Minnesota for additional graduate study. Robert has had a thirty-year career in health care management. He has worked for medical schools, hospitals, and medical group practices throughout the United States. His management interest has been in organizational development. He came to Los Alamos ten years ago as a part of organizing a network of physicians in northern New Mexico. He made a career shift to teach high school sciences on full time basis. He has taught biology, chemistry, and physics for the past four years in Santa Fe and Espanola. His wife Susan is a kindergarten teacher, and his son Steven is a college student. Board member since the fall of 2005. |
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Selvi Viswanathan
661-2618 |
Selvi Viswanathan has a B.Sc. in math, physics, and chemistry from Utkal University in India. She taught science and math for 8 years before coming to New York City in 1967. She and her husband moved to New Mexico in 1976. Many elementary schoolchildren enjoyed seeing her model railroad with Indian scenery. After her son Hari was in middle school, she worked in real estate, including being president of the Los Alamos Association of Realtors. Selvi introduced her son Hari to birds when he was young. He now works in the Environmental Engineering group at LANL, and he has continued to collaborate in building the family's National Wildlife Federation-certified back yard. (Over 100 people toured their yard last summer.) He took many pictures and created the DVD of their backyard wildlife on Barranca Mesa that is now at PEEC. Board member since the fall of 2005. |
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Natali Steinberg
662-7449 |
Natali Steinberg, received a BA in Geography from the University of Colorado. She continued to live in Boulder County, Colorado for 50 years. Natali and her husband lived on a small family farm for 30 years where they raised beef and dairy cattle, sheep, vegetables and kids. Natali served as Chairman of the Boulder County Planning Commission for 10 years and was the Boulder County representative on the Denver Regional Council of Governments Citizen's Advisory Committee. She worked 20 years in a large greenhouse and nursery and taught gardening classes there. Natali moved to New Mexico in 2002 and has lived in Los Alamos since 2004 to be closer to her grandchildren and family. Currently she is a weekly volunteer at PEEC, Randall Davey Audubon Center, and Leonora Curtin Wetlands Preserve. Natali's favorite hobbies include gardening, hiking and hand-spinning. She joined the board in the fall of 2006. |
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Esta Lee Albright
662-0788 |
Esta Lee's environmental interests have been ocean-oriented and she's now added high country issues to her list. She has a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Maryland. Her longest library job was in public and computer services at a community college in CA, where she fell in love with teaching. After retirement she taught sessions for Elderhostel, Big Sur, CA ("Marine Mammals of Big Sur"), trained lighthouse docents at Pt. Sur Light Station, led whale watches for Monterey Bay Whale Watch, and managed a volunteer group monitoring beached marine mammals. Whoa! You might be asking about the jump from libraries to whales. While a librarian, she racked up credits in marine biology from the Univ. of CA. At the same time, she was one of the first educational volunteers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, president of the Monterey chapter of the American Cetacean Society and a naturalist/research assistant on whale watch cruises. By that time, her experience slid her right into the volunteer "otter mom" role, helping to raise orphaned sea otters in the aquarium's otter rehabilitation project. She spent years as an aquarium volunteer, a teacher, naturalist, writer, scuba diver, and, with great love, sailboat owner of her sloop, Valkyrie. New Mexico's environment has called to her since she lived in Santa Fe in the 1970s, and she returned to New Mexico in 2006. She has one daughter/son-in-law, one grandchild, and one dog here in Los Alamos. She joined the board in the fall of 2006. |
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Jennifer Macke
695-9275 |
Jennifer received a B.A. in biology from the College of Wooster and a master's degree in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University. She worked for many years as a molecular biologist, followed by several years as a freelance biomedical editor. Working at home as an editor was enlivened by volunteer work at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News. Since moving to Los Alamos in 2003, she has pursued a bipartite career as freelance editor and part-time employee of the HIV Database at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As the result of a college project on newts, she became interested in keeping and breeding newts and salamanders. This hobby has led to additional interests in aquariums, terrariums, earthworms, and websites. When she isn't cleaning aquariums, she spends time with her husband and two sons. Board Member since the fall of 2007. |
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Nuria Clodius
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Nuria and Lindy are the high school representatives on the PEEC Board of Directors. Nuria is a high school junior who has always loved animals and being outside. She is the 4-H secretary for the Los Alamos county 4-H clubs, and trains and shows her dog through 4-H. She has been volunteering at the Los Alamos Animal Shelter with her sister and father for the last five years, and she was a councilor for the Nature Odyssey week to the Valle Caldera during the summer of 2007. Along with these activities, Nuria enjoys hiking with her dogs throughout the Los Alamos area, and bird watching, especially raptors. Board Member since fall 2007. |