Board of Directors

Ben is a traveling composer-performer whose music explores themes of landscape, place, and environment in North America. Ben has performed in every U.S. state except Delaware and Hawaii, and held artist residencies and fellowships with institutions including the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, Harvard University, Middlebury College, the Partnership for the National Trails System, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. His nonfiction has appeared in Orion, Taproot, Northern Woodlands, Appalachia, Maine Farms, and other publications. He is based around northern New England. You can read more about Ben and his work on his website.

Bob is a retired partner in the Boston law firm Casner & Edwards, LLP. There, he concentrated his practice on the affairs of nonprofit organizations. This work included tax, general corporate, real estate and regulatory matters for a variety of operating charitable and educational organizations, grant-making foundations and trade associations. Bob and his wife oversee a forested parcel in Strafford, Vermont that is enrolled in Vermont's current use program. He is a director of Blueprint Schools Network, Inc., Chaffin Scholarship Fund and Strafford Community Trust, Inc. Bob is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.

Patty is a poet and translator whose work often explores the connections and boundaries between the self and the natural world. She’s the author of the award-winning poetry collections Bell I Wake To and something flown. Her translations include THE BLUE HOUSE: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer, winner of the 2024 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Bright Scythe, her selected translations of the Swedish Nobel laureate. Her work has appeared widely in literary publications and been supported by fellowships from MacDowell and Hedgebrook. She received her Master’s degree in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing, having worked for decades as a registered nurse in various settings, including as the founder and director of a corporate wellness program. Currently, she's the president of a small community-building non-profit. Patty divides her time between the hilltowns of western Massachusetts—where she and her husband raised and launched their two daughters, serve their community, actively steward 700 acres of protected forest and fields, and laugh a lot at the antics of their 13-year-old lab retriever and 1-year-old corgi—and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. She’s an avid gardener and outdoor enthusiast, at her happiest when she’s running, cycling, cross country skiing, kayaking, or just walking around her gardens communing with the other pollinators. Learn more about Patty here.

Tony D’Amato is a Professor of Silviculture and Applied Forest Ecology and Director of the Forestry Program at the University of Vermont.  His research focuses on long-term forest dynamics, disturbance effects on ecosystem structure and function, and silvicultural strategies for conferring adaptation potential within the context of global change, including introduced insects and diseases. Beyond his research and teaching activities, Tony is actively engaged in the forest management community in the northeastern US, including serving as the Chair of the Green Mountain Division of the Society of American Foresters (SAF), Forest Science Technology Coordinator for New England SAF, and co-director of the Northeast Silviculture Institute for Foresters. Prior to joining the University of Vermont in 2015, he was a tenured faculty member at the University of Minnesota and Bullard Fellow at Harvard University’s Harvard Forest. Tony lives in Williston, VT with his wife, Jess, and son, Quinn, where they enjoy spending time together in the woods, as well as at baseball fields and hockey rinks.

John is a retired Business Affairs Attorney in the New York-based Publications Department of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the talent and literary agency, where he negotiated directly with publishers in their acquisition of CAA’s clients’ books and articles for publication. John had come to CAA through its acquisition in 2022 of International Creative Management (ICM), which he joined at the beginning of his career in 1995. He holds a BA from Middlebury College in English and French and a JD from Pace University School of Law and has been a member of the New York State Bar since 1993. He divides his time among Manhattan, Walpole, New Hampshire, and Farmington, Connecticut, where he has been rebuilding an old house as an exercise in joy and frustration. His favorite role and greatest joy has been as dad to his two adult daughters. Born and raised on Long Island, where he was taught to see the land through a seventeenth-century scope, and later in his Huck Finn years as a teen in Cornwall, Vermont, John is presently pursuing a master of forestry degree from the Yale School of the Environment. Larches are his favorite.

Ms. Greger has a long history in the Timber Investment industry. Most recently, she served as the head of the Forestry and Farmland business of The Rohatyn Group, subsequent to its acquisition of the Renewable Resources business from GMO. Previously she was the Managing Director of GMO Renewable Resources, which she founded in 1997. At GMO RR, she assembled a widely skilled team of foresters, agriculture experts, and other professionals to complete the investment of more than US$3.2 billion of capital in a variety of direct forest and farm investments in key production regions of the world, including North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. The diversified portfolio of land and crop investments at GMO RR was built to generate real returns for its clients through production of renewable commodities using sustainable land management. She has been in the timberland investment business since 1985, and prior to founding GMO RR, was responsible for evaluating and structuring acquisitions in the U.S., New Zealand, and Chile for Resource Investments, Inc. – an early pioneer in forestry investment for pension fund clients. Ms. Greger earned her B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.

Kateri Kosek is a poet and essayist whose writing explores the intersection of the personal with landscape, place, and the natural world. She is the author of American Eclipse, winner of the 2022 Three Mile Harbor Press Poetry Book Award, as well as a chapbook, Vernal. Her writing has appeared in such places as Orion, Terrain, Catamaran, Rosebud, and Southern Poetry Review, and has won prizes at Creative Nonfiction and Briar Cliff Review. Kateri teaches English and writing at Northwestern Connecticut Community College and Western CT State University, where she received an MFA. She has been a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Tallgrass Artist Residency in Kansas, and she lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, where she freelances for Berkshire Magazine and The Berkshire Edge. As a lifelong birder, Kateri has occasionally worked surveying local bird populations in the Taconic Mountains, and in Aton Forest in northwest Connecticut, and she enjoys volunteering to climb New England peaks for Mountain Birdwatch, a program of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies that monitors mountain songbird populations. You can read her work here.

Chris is a life-long resident of Connecticut who grew up in that time when parents shooed kids out of the house...and the woods and hills were inviting. As an adult, the allure of trees and topography continue to pull him back in regularly. Now retired, Chris taught in the West Hartford Public School system for many years where he was an elementary level enrichment and accelerated math teacher, working with students in grades 3, 4, and 5. While their own two children have fledged, Chris and his wife live in Storrs where they have both been active community volunteers for many years. In addition to managing their own forestland, they started the Adventure Park at Storrs, as a way of getting people into the forest – and outside in general. When staying relatively still, Chris can be found woodworking, reading, and in conversation.  When moving, he particularly enjoys bicycling and sailing--as well as spending time walking and cross country skiing in the woods.

Jessica Leahy is a professor in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Maine, where she is the Master of Forestry coordinator. She runs a successful research program that studies environmental attitudes and behaviors towards forests, forestry, and other natural resource management topics using a social psychology and communication approaches. Dr. Leahy is past board president of Maine Woodland Owners, a statewide non-profit that engages in advocacy, education, and conservation for small woodland owners. She and her husband, both licensed foresters, were recognized as the 2020 Maine Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year for their stewardship of Wicopy Woods Tree Farm, which is the only small woodland Forest Stewards Guild Model Forest in Maine.

Kevin Porter is Principal of Resilient Capital Solutions, a consulting and advisory firm dedicated to scaling financing for sustainability, clean energy, and community development.  Kevin has over twenty years of experience with various community development financial institutions, spanning single-family, multi-family, and energy efficiency lending.  Kevin currently serves on the board of Kawasiwajo Community Land Trust, and as a member of the City of Concord (New Hampshire) Conservation Commission.

Outside of his consulting business, Kevin owns and manages several small woodlots and has earned certification under the New Hampshire Tree Farm program.  These forestlands are operated with a focus on firewood production, ecosystem services, and growing high quality timber sustainably.  Kevin holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Bates College, a master’s in economics with a focus on community development from the New School for Social Research, and is currently enrolled in a graduate certificate program in forest carbon science, policy and management at Michigan State University.

Matt has over 30 years of forest management experience across a broad range of ownerships and forest regions. In his current role as Vice President of Forest Management with Eastwood Forests, he is responsible for forest management oversight of forest assets, from acquisition through disposition. Prior to joining Eastwood Forests, he held the position of Vice President of Forest Operations at TFG from 2000 to 2022, with management oversight responsibilities for 1.8 million acres.  Prior to his employment with TFG, Matt worked as a Forest Management Analyst and Landowner Assistance Forester for Westvaco Corporation in Virginia, where he directed forest management activities for non-industrial private landowners. Mr. Sampson holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Forest Operations and an MBA from Virginia Tech.  He is a member of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, Association of Consulting Foresters, Virginia Forestry Association, Forest Stewards Guild and the Society of American Foresters.

John was born in inner-city Detroit, grew up on the west side of Cleveland, and is Dartmouth Class of 1964.  He attended University of Michigan Medical School, where he and his wife, Karen, met. He completed his Surgical and Cardiothoracic Surgical training at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and practiced at Northwestern University Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock for over 40 years. He teaches at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and volunteers at the Good Neighbor Health Clinic in White River Junction, VT.  He  served the past 2 years as president of OSHER at Dartmouth Lifelong Learning Institute. He and Karen share a love of everything outdoors, and manage 60 acres of forest and meadowland in Lyme.