Contacts - Board Members
Beth Frantz
Chief Finance and Administrative Officer
bfrantz@sonoraninstitute.org
520-290-0828, ext. 1125
What's New - Board Members
Renewable Energy Advances in Arizona |
The Gift That Keeps On Giving - Arizona's Public Lands |
Jerry Grebenc Joins the Institute as Community Program Manager |
Donate
Kathy Borgen champions causes that help protect, care for, and nurture a love of our planet. She is also passionate about the work of the Institute
Sonoran Institute Board of Directors
The Sonoran Institute is a non-profit 501c(3) organization governed by a Board of Directors with members who serve four-year terms and are allowed to serve two consecutive terms. The Board meets three times annually – in November, March and June – and elects its own leadership. The Institute operates on a July 1 – June 30 fiscal year.
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Board Leadership:
 Bryan Morgan - Chairman. Bryan Morgan is a graduate of Stanford and of the University of Colorado Law School, and lives in Boulder, Colorado. He has worked for the Environmental Defense Fund, for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, taught at the University Of Colorado Law School, and served on the boards of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the Colorado Music Festival, Audubon Colorado, the Boulder Public Library Foundation, and the Yellowstone Association. He is a founding partner of his law firm in Denver, where he has practiced law since 1974,specializing in criminal defense. He comes by his love for the natural world through his work on the family ranch in the Colorado mountains. |
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 Dennis Minano - Vice-Chair. Dennis Minano retired from General Motors Corporation where he served as Vice President of Environment and Energy and Chief Environmental Officer. He serves as a consultant on corporate governance, environment, energy and transportation issues and is a strategic advisor on environmental, governmental, communication, and community issues for development of a new commercial United States/Canadian border crossing. Dennis also is Chair of an energy and transportation advisory group charged with developing recommendations for future U.S. environmental and energy policies. He serves as a Board member, Chair of the Governance Committee and served as a member for the Audit Committee of Wavefront Environmental and Energy Services- a Canandian publicly held company; is Chairman of the Board member of IntegriGuard LLC- a privately held health care service company; the University of Detroit Mercy Board of Trustees; and Sonoran Institute. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Detroit Law School and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Dayton in Ohio. |
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 Nyda Jones-Church - Treasurer. Nyda Jones-Church is a San Diego native and graduate of Stanford University, Nyda Jones-Church is the former CEO and COO of Prudential California Realty in Southern California, for years one of the largest real estate brokerages in the United States and the largest in the Prudential network. Nyda and her partner grew the company from five people in one office in 1985 to over 6,000 people in four affiliated companies with over one hundred offices in Southern California by 2006. Since retiring from Prudential California in 2007, she has focused on consulting to brokerages across the country, developing a major residential project in Baja California and her work with the Sonoran Institute. Her civic commitments in San Diego have included the Junior League, the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the Magdalena Ecke YMCA and the Scripps Hospital Foundation. |
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 Karen Wade - Secretary. In 2004, Karen Wade found a home on the Sonoran Institute Board when she retired from a lengthy career in the National Park Service. A native of Colorado, she began her career as a seasonal at Mesa Verde National Park in 1960, and completed her career as Director of the Intermountain Region. She served as superintendent in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Fort McHenry and Hampton, New Hampshire Sites. She was also a key member of the staff in the early days of the Appalachian Trail land acquisition program (1978-1983). Her undergraduate work was at the University of Colorado and Fort Lewis College, focusing on business. She also attended graduate school at the University of Tennessee. She continues to be devoted to career development where she still occasionally participates and serves on the board of the Western National Park Association. A resident of Montana (west of Glacier National Park), Karen enjoys adventure travel and hiking. She is an accomplished needle-worker and bookworm. She is the mother of two grown children and the devoted grandmother of granddaughters Abby and Jessica. |
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 Joe Kalt - Member-at-Large. Joseph (Joe) Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.He is a principal author of the Project's latest book, The State of the Native Nations. Prof. Kalt holds PhD and Master's degrees in economics from UCLA, and a Bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University. He specializes in the economics of natural resources, economic development, antitrust, and regulation, and serves as senior economist with Lexecon, an FTI Consulting company. He serves on the boards of trustees/directors of Montana State University's Big Sky Institute, The Communications Institute, and the White Mountain Apache Tribe's Fort Apache Heritage Foundation. |
Board Members:
 Phil Allsopp served as President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, headquartered at Taliesin West, Arizona from 2006 through June of 2009. He was responsible for restructuring the Foundation from governance (new bylaws and articles of incorporation) through operations and the development of new relationships with academia, arts and culture organizations, government and business. One of several collaborations Phil developed during his tenure was with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The jointly curated, produced and designed exhibition entitled, Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, broke all of the Guggenheim’s previous attendance records during the exhibition’s three-month run at the Guggenheim in New York. |
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Patsy Batchelder is from the San Francisco Bay Area and Yosemite, and a graduate from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in psychology. She spent 15 years in Ketchum/Sun Valley, Idaho where she worked for Sun Valley Magazine and was actively involved in the Idaho Conservation League, Snake River Alliance and numerous outdoor recreational pursuits. In 1993 she moved to Vail, Colorado, where she helped lead a successful campaign to create a county open space fund. Ten years later, she relocated to Old Snowmass where she worked for the Sopris Foundation, a local nonprofit that deals with land-use and sustainability issues. Currently, she works for EcoFLight, a nonprofit that advocates for protection of remaining wilderness and wildlife habitat through the use of small aircraft. She also serves on the board of the Snowmass Capitol Creek Caucus, a land-use advisory arm of the Pitkin County commissioners. She travels extensively around the west and is passionate about its wide open spaces. |
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 Louise Glasser is a dedicated conservation advocate, who with her husband Jim splits her time between the Chicago area and Tucson, Arizona. She served as the President of the Women's Board of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago for several years and she continues to serve that organization as a Director. She served as the Chair of the Lake Forest Library Board from 1995 to 2000. She is currently a member of the Women's Board of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the Co-Chair and Founder of the Cultural Collections Committee at the Field Museum of Natural History, where she also serves on the Women's Board. She serves as a Trustee for the Newberry Library, is a Board member for Know Your Chicago, a continuing education program, and is a member and former officer of the Lake Forest Garden Club (Garden Club of America). Louise was also the Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for the Merit School of Music in Chicago, which raised more than nineteen million dollars. |
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 Paul Hansen is a lifelong conservationist. For 12 years, he was executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America located outside Washington D.C., and for 11 years director of the League’s Midwest Office in Minneapolis. Hansen was chair of the “Green Group,” the leadership forum of CEOs of the major national environmental groups, and a founding member of the American Wildlife Conservation Partners (AWCP), a forum of hunting conservation leaders. Hansen has also been Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Greater Yellowstone program. He was a founding board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, SaveOurEnvironment.org, and the Sustainable Forestry Board. Paul has a Master’s Degree in Natural Resource Management and Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Antioch University. He is the 2008 winner of the prestigious Keystone Leadership in the Environment Award. He is finishing a book titled Progress Point: Achieving Conservation Success. Paul is married to artist Kay Stratman. |
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 Alan Nicholson received his undergraduate degree at MSU and attended graduate school at Northwestern University. He taught for several years and worked for the Office of Public Instruction in Helena, before getting into property management and real estate development in the 1970s. His current project is the Great Northern Town Center which is a mixed use, high-density development in the former Great Northern station in Helena. He is the former chair of the Montana Board of Public Education, past president of the Helena Chamber of Commerce, and past president of the Montana Ambassadors. |
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 Laurinda Oswald was born in Tucson, Arizona, but grew up in Italy, living in Florence for three years and Rome for nine. Her parents purchased the ranch in Amado, Arizona which she has now managed for 25 years. For the past ten years, she has raised cattle on an eight-pasture grazing rotation system enjoying the wonderful benefits of the watershed along four miles of the Santa Cruz River. Laurinda has two children, and when not at her ranch, she enjoys visiting her family both in New York City and Italy. |
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 Ann Hunter-Welborn started her career in teaching, then joined the family business (Hunter Industries), and is now acting as Chair of the Board. Hunter Industries is made up of about 1000 employees and manufactures irrigation equipment which is sold all over the world. As the innovation leaders, Hunter holds more than 250 product patents and 40 trademarks, starting with the Hunter PGP® in 1983 – the pop-up gear-driven rotor that revolutionized the irrigation industry. Since then, Hunter has developed more than 100 innovative products that meet the needs of professional installers worldwide, including the new ACC Controller that was voted the most significant new product at the 2005 International Irrigation Association Show. She is somewhat of a perpetual student, having a BA in Political Science, an MA in Special Education, and a PhD in Mythological Studies. |
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Click here for Mainstreet Access Emeritus In Memoriam |
Henri Bisson recently retired after more than 34 years of service with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). He began his BLM career in 1974, a tenure that involved positions in Colorado, Arizona, California, Alaska (as BLM State Director) and Washington, DC. Henri served as the BLM’s Deputy Director for Operations in Washington, DC from 2006 until retirement. During this time, he also served as Acting Senior Advisor for Alaska Affairs for Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Bisson received numerous leadership awards throughout his career, including two Meritorious Presidential Rank awards and several Secretarial Executive Leadership Awards. He is the President of the Public Lands Foundation; a nonprofit dominated by retired BLM employees. Henri has a BS in Forest Resources from the University of New Hampshire and an MS in Watershed Management from the University of Arizona. Henri’s passion is making things happen!
Andrew Downs is a third generation Colorado native who currently splits his time between a home in Colorado Springs and a career with Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services in Southern California. At Prudential, he has responsibility for an investment subsidiary that supports mergers and acquisitions activity in the residential real estate sector, for the forward looking budgeting and analytics of the business and for the global alliances component of the relocation business. He has been with Prudential since 1997 and prior to that was involved in commercial and corporate lending with Wells Fargo, Security Pacific and United Bank of Denver. Andrew has served on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Claremont McKenna College. His senior thesis there was on the economics of water law in California, and his B.A. degree in economics was awarded Magna cum Laude. He also serves on the boards of a number of the companies in which Prudential has made investments.
Christopher (Chris) Duerksen is Managing Director with Clarion Associates, a land use consulting firm. He is a land use lawyer and has represented local governments, nonprofits, and the private sector in a variety of land-use and zoning matters. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago, and his undergraduate liberal arts degree from the Kansas State College. A co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, Chris has written and spoken extensively on land use issues in Colorado and nationally. He has authored many books and articles on land use and conservation issues.
Bill Mitchell works primarily with non-profit groups focused on energy and natural resource development that threaten endangered but intact ecosystems and working ranchlands in the Northern Rockies, western Canada and Alaska. Traveling regularly throughout the region, he helps to link groups together, encourages strategic thinking about their work and advocates for their financial support. Over the years, Bill has worked on both sides of the foundation desk, seeking to leverage support for grassroots and regional groups working on environmental stewardship, social and economic justice and nuclear safety. He has been an advisor to the Alki Fund at Tides since its inception in 1991. Bill was born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West and educated as a wildlife biologist. An avid bird hunter and watcher, Bill spends much of his free time each fall in Montana and Alberta wandering the back roads. Bill and his wife, Mia, moved to rural Vashon Island in Puget Sound in 2004.
Louise (Lollie) Plank divides her time between her Lek Ranch near Sheridan, Wyoming, family and business obligations in Minnesota, and her home in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to the Sonoran Institute, her board interests include the Wyoming Community Foundation, the Center for a Vital Community at Sheridan College in Wyoming, and the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Past board tenures include the Animal Human Society of Hennepin County (MN), the Science Museum of Minnesota, Pheasants Forever, the National Wildflower Research Center, the Yellowstone Art Center and the Yellowstone Association.
Barton (Buzz) Thompson is the Perry L. McCarty Director and Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, and the Robert E. Paradise Professor in Natural Resources Law at Stanford Law School. He holds J.D., M.B.A., and B.A. (Economics & Political Science) degrees from Stanford University. His scholarship and teaching focus on natural resource management, with a particular focus on western water. He is a California trustee of The Nature Conservancy and serves on the boards of the American Farmland Trust, Resources Legacy Fund, and Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.
Marty Yenawine maintains residences on Wellesley Island, NY and in Scottsdale, AZ with his wife Linda. He is the developer and principal of the award-winning Onondaga Commons, LLC, a six-acre, 45,000 sq. ft. human services center on the near west side of the urban core of Syracuse. He served as corporate vice president and assistant to the president for two publicly held healthcare corporations after he sold a Syracuse-based emergency medical services company in 1994. Prior service includes professional positions in United Way organizations in Niagara Falls, Rochester and Elmira, NY. He chaired the Small Business Council of the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce, founded and chaired Leadership Greater Syracuse, and served on many boards of civic and charitable organizations. He was President of the American Ambulance Association from 1994 to 1996.