Marsha Jane Kellogg, President
Marsha joined the board of Native Future in January 2007 and is happy to have an active role in supporting the organization’s mission and the indigenous of Panama. For the past six years, Marsha has been working as a consultant on conservation and development projects for non-profit organizations such as the Rainforest Alliance and CARE, and on USAID-funded projects managed by private firms. Her work sends her to native lands in the Americas and Africa where she has worked with and learned from native peoples such as the Huarani of Ecuador, Maya of Guatemala, Boki tribes of Nigeria, and Mescalero Apache of New Mexico. Marsha is a natural resources planner with background in cross-cultural communications and facilitation. She works with community, government and non-governmental groups to develop action plans, make land use decisions, and to manage conflict over natural resources. She’s also a trainer and environmental assessment specialist.
A native Vermonter and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Panama 1992 – 1994) Marsha currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she happily roams the southwest desert with the roadrunners and her companion, Doug Erb.
Zachary McNish, Land Tenure Project Coordinator
Zachary McNish was born and raised in Hawai'i. After graduating from Williams College in 1999, he spent three years in Panama as a Peace Corps Volunteer. One of those years was spent living and working in the remote Wounaan community of Rio Hondo with current board member, Julian Dendy. Together, they performed a community analysis which they used to help the community determine its goals and needs. Based on this community plan, they helped the Wounaan improve some of their agricultural techniques and develop a small eco-tourism project.
Zachary graduated from Duke Law School in 2006 and is currently clerking for a federal magistrate judge in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Board
Sara Archbald, Education Project Coordinator
Sara grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch farming country, north of Philadelphia, an area from which she was happy to flee in 1962 to attend college. Upon graduation she worked, in those early heady days of Peace Corps, as a literacy volunteer in Bogota, Colombia, and later with her husband, trained volunteers for other Latin American countries. SaraUltimately they settled in Maine, where Sara enjoyed an active community life with many volunteer positions in rural Maine while raising her two sons.
In 2000, Sara rejoined the Peace Corps as an agroforestry volunteer and served two years with the Ngabe-Bugle indigenous peoples of Panama in the isolated Nurun village of El Jacinto. Sara supported the activities of her village communal farm, as well as regional women’s and farmer groups, teaching practices of composting, planting of tree nurseries, rice and fish tank farming – plus more. Sara returned to Portland, Maine in 2002, where she currently works at the Maine Historical Society as Executive Administrative Assistant.
While in Panama Sara helped start a scholarship fund with the El Jacinto Bugle families working in the cooperative farm: shoes and uniforms are purchased for participants’ elementary children, tuition is paid for their few high school children. A reciprocal relationship has developed between Sara, who raises the funds, and her extended family in El Jacinto and beyond, who nourish her when she returns for two weeks every year to support the work of the scholarship fund. Sara is eager to work with Native Future in the fulfillment of the education component of its mission, while expanding and bringing more sustainability to the Ngabe Bugle scholarship program.
Christine Ageton
Christine Ageton is an experienced conservation planner and facilitator with specialties in drinking water protection, transboundary protected areas and watershed protection. Christine is a native of Boulder, Colorado and spent the last ten years living in New Mexico working with Native American Indians on drinking water protection. Christine recently moved to Panama and she is now working as a conservation planning consultant based in Clayton near the Panama Canal Zone.
She received her Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1995. Christine holds two masters degrees in Community and Regional Planning and Latin American studies from the University of New Mexico (1997-2002). Christine’s Master’s thesis research was based in Belize and is titled Trust and Equity: A Case Study of Maya Center Community Perspectives on the Co-Management of Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, Belize, Central America. During her time in Belize, Christine worked extensively with Mopan Mayan communities on natural resource management issues
Christine has significant international work experience which includes transboundary park planning, community development and capacity development for protected areas management (IDB Transboundary Parks Initiative; 2006; El Pilar, Belize/Guatemala; 1997, 2004, and Cockscomb Basin Sanctuary; 2002). She has taught community based planning at the College of Santa Fe (2000) and was director of the Institute for Conservation Studies (ICONS) Belize program from 2000 to 2001. Christine has published work on co-management park initiatives in Belize, and in land use and cultural preservation planning in Northern New Mexico.
Mark Morrison
Mark Morrison was born and raised in Chicago, IL. After graduating with a finance concentration from the Cornell Hotel School in 1996, he worked in finance and business development roles for Tishman Realty, Hilton Hotels, Silicon Valley Bank, and started his own tourism and hotel consulting practice. Mark also served in the US Peace Corps, living with the Kuna Indians in Panama from 2001 to 2003. In 2006 Mark completed his MBA through the accelerated one-year program at Kellogg School of Management.
Mark is currently a consultant with Bain & Company.
Joe Torres
Joe Torres was born and raised in Wallingford, Connecticut, and has a degree in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of Montana. After graduating, he spent four years in Guatemala and Paraguay as a Peace Corps Volunteer engaged in park planning and natural resource management. He then spent eight years with CARE as Project Manager for various natural resource development projects, education projects, and conservation projects in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Costa Rica.
Joe first met the Wounaan in his position as Associate Peace Corps Director for the Agroforestry and Permaculture programs in Panama. After two-and-a-half-years in Panama, he was transferred to Peace Corps Micronesia, where he served as Program Training Officer, and then Country Director for two years.
Here in the United States, Joe has spent ten years working with the USDA Forest Service in the positions of NEPA Coordinator, Ecologist, Planner, and Wildlife Biologist. While with the Forest Service, Joe has also provided short term technical assistance to conservation projects in Uganda, Honduras, and Guatremala through the Forest Service's International Programs branch.
He now lives in Rutland, Vermont with his wife of 21 years, Sharon Torres, and their daughter Sara, who is a senior in high school. Sara was raised in Uganda and Costa Rica and has endured her early teenage years living in Panama and Micronesia.
Julian Dendy
A founding member of Native Future, Julian became interested in working with indigenous peoples as a result of his Peace Corps experience in Panama. Living in the rainforest in a Wounaan village and working side by side with the locals, he saw firsthand the issues that affect their lives and land. His main projects there were aimed at dealing with some of the local priorities; the development of a small ecotourism venture, the construction of a new water treatment system, and the expansion of the market for the local artists' crafts.
After leaving Panama and working for two years with The Nature Conservancy as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Palau, he moved to the Coral Reef Research Foundation-Palau (www.CoralReefResearchFoundation.org), where he currently works as a biological technician and collection manager.
Janice Jorgensen
Janice is a native rural Californian living in Massachusetts since 1971. She was a professional Peace Corps Volunteer working in Rural Community Development in Dominican Republic 1966-1968 and has professional experience in sales and marketing for small private companies to Fortune 100.
She was Peace Corps Country Director-Panama 1997-2002 and has served as a EMA Disaster Assistance Employee working in hurricanes Charley, Ivan, Jeanne,Katrina, and Rita in Disaster Field Training Operations and Individual Assistance in Disaster Recovery Centers. Janice also works as a gender consultant in Latin America and is an avid birdwatcher and basketball fan.
Tyler McNish
Tyler graduated from Stanford University in 2002. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 2003-2005 and worked in New Product Development for the Advisory Board Company in Washington D.C. from 2005-2007.
Tyler is currently a law student at Boalt Hall in Berkeley, California.
Education Advisory Group
Carolyn Heasly
Carolyn Heasly visited the village of El Jacinto in the Ngabe-Bugle region of Panama in 2003. The remoteness, the heat and dust, the delightful children, the wandering pigs, the welcoming smiles, the mountain views, all left an indelible impression which inspires her involvement with the Basilio Perez Scholarship Fund. Carolyn teaches and creates art and is employed by the Art Gallery at the University of New England. She and her husband Joe live in Portland, Maine and have 4 children.
Ellie Mercer
In 1990 Ellie Mercer was ordained as a United Church of Christ minister and served as an associate in several churches until 2002. She then moved from parish ministry to a position as a hospice chaplain. Ellie’s passion for this work is reflected in these words:
“I am always on a rather intense spiritual journey where authenticity is at the center. The work I do with dying people and their families allows me to be in their lives at a time when the masks are dropped, when the games that consume us during our lives no longer matter. What matters is comfort, support, compassion, truth telling. What matters to me is being able to sustain a presence in the midst of death and to be able to assist people in breaking the barriers which lead us into a denial of death.”
The Basilio Perez Scholarship Program attracted Ellie from the very beginning because of her friendship with its leader, Sara Archbald, “one of the most authentic people I know. I was flattered to be asked to be on her Board of Advisors.” Ellie has put her great fiddling skills and connections to great use while helping to raise scholarship funds.
Ellie and her husband have 2 sons who live and work in NYC, and they have one grand dog.
Bill Gregory
Bill is a retired UCC minister who has been actively involved in social justice issues from the time he marched for civil rights in the south in the 60s. Retirement has given him the opportunity to continue his work and play in the many areas of life that bring him great joy: teaching and writing about the role of the Spirit in the lives of those around him, serving community and church groups with goals of peace and justice and love in the world, and most importantly, spending as much time as he can with his wonderful wife, children, and grandchildren.
Bill visited his former parishioner, Sara Archbald, in El Jacinto, Panama in 2001, with his friend Allan Lovell. He was struck by the isolation, the beauty, the poverty of the area and since then has been committed to helping in any way he can to support the Basilio Perez Scholarship Fund.
Nancy Ansheles
Nancy Ansheles has been a great friend of scholarship program director, Sara Archbald, for more than ten years. They first met working for the non-profit, The Roundtable Center, where they championed the inclusive and collaborative community dialogue process of study circles. Focused on the value of communication and education, Nancy enthusiastically supports Sara in her efforts to fund and administer the scholarship program.
Nancy has an undergraduate degree in Communication from James Madison University in Virginia, and a Masters in Corporate Education from Boston University. Her business, Catalyst & Co., facilitates results through creative learning programs for businesses and nonprofits. She has worked with many international communities in developing workplace skills, and volunteers her time in an ESL classroom, and with the Cancer Community Center. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Diane Wilbur
Diane grew up in Massachusetts and attended Colby College in Maine. She spent several years in many other parts of the country before settling back in New England where she was involved in many volunteer organizations with an emphasis on helping children. Diane returned to graduate school when her son started college and received an MBA from the University of New Haven.
Diane moved to Maine in 1998 and worked for the local NBC TV station until her retirement in 2007. Bringing her accounting and organizational skills, Diane has been involved with the Native Future's scholarship fund since its inception. Diane comes from a family with many teachers, and her parents were strong supporters of education and the opportunities it brings. She looks forward to bringing that passion to expanding the education program so more children can be served.
Scott Thompson
Scott Thompson was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. After graduating from the University of Richmond in 1990, he worked in 19 states for Kraft Foods over nine years. Then he came to his senses and settled in Maine and is currently a sales manager for Hallmark Cards in Maine, NH and VT.
Scott has a keen interest in Latin American history, culture, and literature (and food!). He has traveled extensively throughout Mexico and has enjoyed a few samplings of Central America in recent years.
Clive Kincaid
Clive Kincaid was born and raised in Santa Monica, California and has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropolgy from UCLA. He was the founder and first Executive Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), a non-profit environmental organization that currently has over 20,000 members and a two million dollar annual budget. He has worked closely with the Wounaan for over eight years, buying and selling Wounaan baskets. He has strong relationships with many Wounaan leaders, and an intimate understanding of Wounaan culture.
Clive currently lives in Page, Arizona with his wife Chris, a National Park Service Archaeologist, and their thirteen year-old son, Nick.
Advisory Council
