Staff
Ira Shadis (he/him)
Executive Director
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Ira grew up in the arms of the Winooski River; home up in the headwaters, school on the main stem, and summer days swimming in the Mad. His professional life has focused on the cross section of environmental stewardship, education, and communication. These days he focuses on turning the Mad River Watershed into a sponge and building resilience into the landscape.
Contact: [email protected] |
Luke Foley (he/him)
Education and Outreach Manager
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Luke grew up in the mountains of Colorado, but found a home in the Mad River Valley starting back in 2008. He has an extensive background as an educator, having previously worked as an Experiential Learning Coordinator at Northfield Middle High School. Prior to working in public schools, Luke was a wilderness instructor, an international travel guide, and program director for several schools and programs in Vermont, the western United States, and around the world. He was the 2014 Vermont Teacher of the Year, is National Park Service Climate Resiliency Fellow, and a Vermont Master Naturalist. He lives in Waitsfield with his family. In his free time, Luke likes to run and bike our local trails, swim and paddle in our rivers and lakes, and use all types of skis to navigate the winter landscape.
Contact: [email protected] |
Julie Frost (she/her)
Watershed Project Coordinator
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Julie grew up in the deep south with a deep love of the ocean and climbing trees. Relocating to Rhode Island after college in Florida, she continued her passion for the marine ecosystem as an avid volunteer during her 30+ year biotech career. Relocating gradually from Rhode Island to Vermont over the last decade, she fell in love with the beautiful forests and rivers of northern Vermont, and became increasingly interested in how they are stewarded. Julie decided to pursue a Masters degree in 2023 to follow what she knows to be her true calling - environmental conservation and stewardship, with a focus on recreation ecology. An avid outdoor explorer, you can find her frolicking in nature doing almost any kind of human-powered activity.
Contact: [email protected] |
Rohan Press (he/him)
Watershed Engagement Coordinator
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Rohan grew up in the Pacific Northwest, having left a piece of his heart back in the canyonlands of Oregon's Blue Mountains, even as he is now looking for home in the Greens. He has split his adult life between a pursuit of the humanities (having just finished his Masters in Religion and Literature from Harvard Divinity School) and service in the woods, most notably with the Colville National Forest of Northeastern Washington, and now with Friends of the Mad River. It is that challenge of really becoming a "friend" that Rohan wants to take up: learning how to make a lifelong friend of a river, and of the people who live along its course.
Contact: [email protected] |
Michelle Krieg (she/her)
Restoration Nursery Coordinator
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Michelle grew up in Wisconsin, surrounded by farmland, expansive prairies, and forests spotted with hundreds of glacier-formed lakes. For the past 20 years she has worked as an ecologist and horticulturalist, exploring how humans engage with our landscapes and how we can be stewards of place and the bioregional communities to which we belong. With a love for the inherent beauty, art, and joy of growing plants, she has managed and supported several native plant nurseries with state and federal parks, environmental education centers, and community nonprofits—stewarding riparian, forest, marshland, and meadow habitats through community-centred practice. She is excited to join the Friends of the Mad River team as a means to not only create healthy landscapes and rivers, but to also cultivate relationships and a culture of care and stewardship. Having recently lived in a small village along the River Dart in England, she now looks forward to exploring the local trails, swimming in the river, and letting her roots grow in the Mad River Valley.
Contact: [email protected] |
Lisa Koitzsch (she/her)
Office Manager
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Lisa grew up in the mountains of Switzerland and moved to the Upper Valley in Vermont when she was 12 years old. She went to college in Baltimore, MD and worked for a non-profit in Washington DC for several years but the Mad River Valley has been her home since 2002. Every winter, she and her husband Ky travel to Yellowstone and Isle Royale National Parks for several months to work as wildlife biologists studying predators (wolves) and their prey (elk & moose). In the summer, Lisa loves to explore the upper reaches of the Mad River Watershed with her dog, Phoebe, looking for neotropical migratory birds and moose.
Lisa lives in the Mill Brook subwatershed. |
Board of Directors
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Photos by Lawson's Finest Liquids, Clark Amadon, Julie Westervelt, and Corrie Miller