2025 Prospective Board Members

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 Valerie moved to Gaithersburg in 2019, and has spent the  past several years exploring parks in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. She has volunteered with Anacostia Riverkeeper since 2023,  helping with park cleanups and water quality monitoring. She has also  participated in invasive weed removal workdays and is interested in learning more about how to improve the watershed. She currently works as a marketing editor for a financial services company.  

I’m a child of the Chesapeake and a neighbor of the Northwest Branch. I was born very near where the Chesapeake joins the Atlantic, I learned to swim (dog paddle) in a South River tributary, and I’ve lived in the Anacostia or Rock Creek watersheds for nearly five decades.

I’ve worked on a range of environmental issues since the mid-1980s, mostly on the local and state levels, mostly in grassroots research, education, organizing, and advocacy, mostly in Maryland and Washington region, but also for a few years in North Carolina. That work has often entailed working with others to fight damaging projects and policies– landfills, incinerators, highways, developments in floodplains, etc., and policies or

legislation that promote them or ignore their impacts – while creating or maintaining space for better alternatives – zero waste, sane land use, more and better public transit and bicycle and pedestrian access, and planning and permitting decisions that take climate change, public health, and economic, social, and environmental justice into account. I’ve met some of my longest-time friends through that activism.

I think…. I know…. there’s genius in the grassroots, where we often learn and teach by doing, and where we innovate and create because we can and we must. If elected, I’d like to help strengthen Neighbors’ base in Prince George’s County, to help build relationships with other nonprofits and with local and state decision makers, and to engage our members and communities in the critical work of fighting climate change while building social, economic and environmental resilience in the face of climate change and other stressors. That good work is needed now more than ever.

I am interested in being a candidate for selection to the NNWB Board. I am very interested in water issues in our watersheds and  believe I will be able to make a positive impact. Professionally, I work as a Water Resources Engineer and therefore am familiar with many of  the issues afflicting our local waterbodies as well as stormwater runoff. Furthermore, I live in the NorthWest Branch watershed and enjoy the many trails of stream regularly and would love to be an advocate for their improvement and sustainability.

 Nora moved to the north-eastern part of the NWB in 2021. She got involved with NNWB because of the tremendous impact of stormwater erosion, trash, and non-native invasives on the tributaries in her neighborhood. She has a varied background that includes science, education, and entrepreneurship. She is continuing to learn about composting, native plants, and water quality. Nora hopes to empower neighbors to improve our waterway from their own backyards.

 Rebecca has lived in Woodmoor since 2014, choosing the neighborhood because of its proximity to the dynamic natural beauty of the NW Branch. She, her husband, their two nature-loving boys and dog walk almost daily on the  trails, appreciating the belted kingfishers, spicebushes, sycamores, and moss-covered boulders immensely. Rebecca is a Maryland Master Naturalist and is leading the effort to create the Springsong Museum at  Burnt Mills.

Michael is a relatively new inhabitant of the Northwest Branch watershed, having moved to the area from Missouri a few years ago. He is working on his Ph.D. in nineteenth-century American literature. His particular focus is on the way American literature of that time portrayed the natural world, including how it grappled with growing ecological awareness and what that awareness meant for humankind’s understanding of its own place in the world. He hopes to help the Neighbors of the Northwest Branch expand its clean-up efforts and increase its educational outreach to those living in the watershed. 

 Kristin lives along the section of the Northwest Branch just south of the Beltway, having moved there from New York in 2014. In 2017, she joined the Neighbors of the Northwest Branch to help promote the everyday actions citizens can take to preserve the watershed, such as cleaning up portions of the river and cataloging the wildlife they encounter.

Deb has been a resident along the middle section of NW Branch for 22 years. She has spent many hours along NW Branch hiking, biking, picking up trash and sometimes removing invasive vines. She was an Anacostia Riverkeeper water quality monitor for the past two years testing water in local streams, including NWBranch. This year she is also serving as a salt watch monitor. She is a retired nonprofit executive and former attorney for Legal Services in Montgomery County. During law school, she certified in environmental law.

Nick has lived in the Woodmoor community for almost 40 years and is  fortunate to have access to the Northwest Branch from the back yard  gate. He has spent many hours of the past couple of years picking up litter along the Northwest Branch and its tributaries between Burnt Mills East and Piney Branch Road. He is currently the litter hot spot clean up coordinator for the Friends of Sligo Creek and a Patuxent  Protector through WSSC where he and his husband, Larry Morales, collected a significant amount of trash that had been left behind by users of the watershed at the Browns Bridge Recreation Area. Nick began to transition to retirement at the end of 2012 after selling his  landscaping company. Full retirement came three years later.

Melissa lives in the lower Northwest Branch and is grateful to be near such a beautiful, peaceful place. She has enjoyed running and biking along the NWB, its tributaries and the Anacostia since moving to the area in 2015. Melissa aims to increase community involvement in protecting and restoring the watershed and has led and participated in cleanups, in addition to collecting litter on a regular basis, and advocating for surrounding parks and trails. She works in international development.

Ben has enjoyed biking, hiking, spotting wildlife and coordinating cleanups along the Northwest Branch since moving to the area in 2013. When he's not in the woods or near the water, he works as an IT Business Analyst for a small grant management software company. He hopes to help  grow environmental stewardship in the lower NWB, especially in and around Hyattsville. He loves how the beautiful river and its adjoining trails and parks bring people from all walks of life together to enjoy the outdoors.

Scott has lived in two places along the upper Northwest Branch (Forest Knolls 2001–2006, Stonegate 2016–present), but is originally from  Wisconsin. He is the map editor for National Geographic. He enjoys doing trash cleanups, and literally stumbled upon the abandoned farm in  the woods behind his Stonegate house—leading to cleaning out the old farm dump, and becoming aware of the severe invasive plant problem. He is aiming to clear 300 acres of the NWB Recreational Park of massive  invasive vines, and to make a positive impact on the natural world.

  Larry has lived in the Middle Section of the Northwest Branch watershed since 1984. A retired economist, he has been NNWB Treasurer since 2009. Since April 2009 his volunteer work and hobby have been as a county Weed Warrior, cutting nonnative invasive vines mostly along the NWB between Randolph Road and New Hampshire Avenue. Qualified as a supervisor, he occasionally leads volunteer groups in cutting invasives in the watershed.  The by-laws allow for a non-board member treasurer, and Larry has ably filled this role.

Ed is a Professional Engineer. After 34 years of federal service, Ed retired from USDA where he had significantly reduced environmental impacts and operations and maintenance costs by implementing sustainable practices at the USDA Headquarters Complex. He has extensive experience in sustainable construction and Operations and Maintenance building practices, including energy management, indoor air quality, biobased  products, environmentally beneficial landscaping, and waste minimization & recycling. Ed is a member of Friends of Sligo Creek and a founding member of Neighbors of the Northwest Branch through which he  encourages homeowners to manage their onsite stormwater.

 Glenn moved into the Northwest Branch watershed, Upper Section, in 2000 and has been an NNWB member since 2005. He served on the NNWB Board for about 10 years. In 2010, he initiated a water quality monitoring team that samples water in the NW Branch quarterly near the trail crossing at Kemp Mill Rd. using the Audubon Naturalist Society’s invertebrate monitoring program criteria. In 2018 he set up our new website and has contributed many pictures of plant life along the NWB as well as monitoring the stream for macroinvertebrates.