Sandy Batty, Treasurer
Sandy Batty is the Executive Director of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), a statewide nonprofit organization that helps environmental commissions and municipal officials throughout New Jersey protect natural resources. Before becoming Executive Director in 2002, Ms Batty was ANJEC's Assistant Director, editor of the quarterly ANJEC Report and supervisor of ANJEC publications. She currently serves as Chairman of the Mountain Lakes Planning Board. Previously she served as a member of the town's environmental commission, and was elected to two terms on the Borough Council.
Michele S. Byers, Vice-Chair
Michele became Executive Director of NJCF in 1999. Prior to becoming Executive Director, she served as Assistant Director and spearheaded NJCF’s work in the Pine Barrens, helping found the Pinelands Preservation Alliance and Whitesbog Preservation Trust. In 1995 Michele was appointed to the State Planning Commission and was named as Vice Chair in 1998. She served as Chair of New Jersey State Committee of the Highlands Coalition, and former Chair of New Jersey’s Freshwater Wetlands Mitigation Council. In 2003, Michele was appointed by Governor McGreevey to serve on the Highlands Task Force, and is a board member of the Center for Non-Profit Corporations. Michele also serves as Advisor to the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance, is a member of the NJ Trails Council, and a member of The Hopewell Township Mercer County Open Space Committee. She was a former President of the Whitesbog Preservation Trust, and served on the Burlington County Agriculture Development Board for over ten years. Michele has a BA in Biology, Western State College, Gunnison, Colorado. She resides in Hopewell, Mercer County.
Valorie Caffee
Valorie is a life-long social justice activist. She is the Chair of the Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the NJDEP, and is a member of the NJ CARAT (Community Action & Response Against Toxics), a team of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. She is also Convener and a Steering Committee Member of the NJ Environmental Justice Alliance. Valorie is the immediate past Vice President of UAW Local 4-149; co-founder of Womanspace, Mercer County’s Shelter and Agency for the Victims of Domestic and Sexual Violence; and a board member of Green Faith. She worked for 13 years as the Director of Organizing for the Work Environment Council, and is the Vice President of the Ewing Park Brae Civic Association. Valorie has a B.S. in History, Liberal Arts from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). She lives in Ewing Township.
Tim Dillingham
Tim Dillingham serves as the Executive Director of the American Littoral Society (ALS), a national membership based coastal conservation organization in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The Littoral Society’s mission is to promote the study and conservation of coastal habitats, living resources and environmental quality. The Society is one of the oldest coastal conservation organizations in the nation, established in 1961. Tim has a BS in biology, and a graduate degree in coastal and marine resource management from the University of Rhode Island. Previously he worked as the Director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, and serves as a Board member for the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. He lives in Hopewell Borough, with his wife Barbara Reale and his three children.
Tom Gilbert
Tom joined the Trust for Public Land in January of 2008 to direct state and local conservation finance initiatives in the mid-Atlantic region. Since then, Tom has helped to design and pass seven successful county and local ballot measures to finance parks and land conservation in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. As Chair of the NJ Keep It Green Campaign, a coalition of over 140 organizations working to renew and strengthen the Garden State Preservation Trust, he led a successful statewide campaign to pass a $400 million bond measure on the Nov. 2009 ballot to continue open space preservation efforts in New Jersey. Prior to joining TPL, Tom served as Director of Eastern Forest Conservation for the Wilderness Society and Executive Director of the regional Highlands Coalition where he led successful efforts to pass federal and New Jersey state legislation to protect the Highlands. He was also the mid-Atlantic coordinator for Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation in the national Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA) campaign. He earned his M.S. in Natural Resources Planning from the University of Vermont.
Debbie Mans, Chair
Debbie Mans is the Baykeeper and Executive Director of NY/NJ Baykeeper, a conservation and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting, preserving and restoring the Hudson-Raritan Estuary ( www.nynjbaykeeper.org). Prior to joining Baykeeper, Ms. Mans was the Environmental and Energy Policy Advisor for Governor Jon S. Corzine. She was also appointed by Governor Corzine to the New Jersey State Planning Commission. Prior to working for the Governor, Ms. Mans was the Policy Director at Baykeeper, a position she held from 2002 through 2006. Ms. Mans is a graduate of The University of Michigan and holds a J.D. from Vermont Law School. Ms. Mans is on the board of NJ Future.
Carleton Montgomery
Carleton became the second executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance in 1998. An attorney by training, he practiced law at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in its Washington, D.C. office for nearly 12 years, the last four years as a partner in the firm’s litigation practice. Since joining the Alliance, Carleton has worked with his colleagues to strengthen both its advocacy and its education initiatives, with the goal of ensuring the New Jersey Pine Barrens ecosystem will survive, and its regional conservation and sustainable development will succeed, in the nation’s most crowded state. Carleton has a B.A. from Harvard University and an M. Phil. from University College London, both in philosophy, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In addition to the NJ League of Conservation Voters, he serves on the boards of the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment, and New Jersey Future.
Bill Sheehan
Captain Bill Sheehan is a dedicated, active conservationist who founded Hackensack Riverkeeper in 1997 and serves as the organization's Executive Director. Captain Bill, as he is known to most people, holds a Master of Inland Waterways license from the US Coast Guard. Captain Bill is the current Chair of the Meadowlands Conservation Trust and a founding (and current) member of the Bergen County Trust Fund Public Advisory Committee and serves on the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Program Citizens Advisory Committee. Captain Bill has been recognized for his work on numerous occasions by the media, the government and the environmental and business communities. When he is not conducting Eco-Cruises aboard the vessel Edward Abbey, chairing meetings, or otherwise advocating for the Hackensack River watershed, Captain Bill enjoys rock n’ roll music, movies and fishing for Striped bass in his favorite river.
Julia Somers
Julia Somers is Executive Director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, which represents a diverse network of organizations — small and large, local, regional, and statewide — and individuals. Its mission is to represent their common goal to protect, enhance and restore the resources of the New Jersey Highlands and to preserve the quality and quantity of drinking water both for the 850,000 people who live in the Highlands as well as the more than four million people living elsewhere in the state who depend on Highlands water. Prior to 2006, Julia was Executive Director of the Great Swamp Watershed Association, a membership-based organization working to protect the land and water of the ten towns of the Great Swamp watershed in Morris and Somerset Counties. Julia serves on the Boards of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment and the New Jersey Environmental Lobby. She also serves on her community's Open Space Committee. Julia, her husband and family live in Green Village.
Eric Stiles, Secretary
Eric Stiles is the Chief Operating Officer and Vice President for Conservation at New Jersey Audubon, an organization with a two-fold mission of reconnecting people and nature and stewarding the nature of today for the people of tomorrow. Prior to working at NJ Audubon, Eric directed a regional ecology program at the Assateague Island National Seashore and worked as a wildlife biologist with NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife. He holds a M.P.A. and M.S. (Ecology) from Rutgers University and is a graduate of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He also serves on the Boards of the Environmental Endowment of New Jersey and the New Jersey Academy of Aquatic Science and the Bernardsville’s Green Team and Highlands Conformance Committee. Eric lives in Bernardsville, New Jersey with his wife and two children.
Jim Waltman
Jim Waltman is the Executive Director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, a position he has held since April 2005. The Watershed Association protects clean water and the environment in central New Jersey through conservation, advocacy, science and education. Jim also serves as a member of the State Agriculture Development Committee, which oversees New Jersey’s farmland preservation program, a position to which Governor Corzine appointed him in 2008. Prior to joining the Watershed Association, he was the Director of Wildlife Programs for the Wilderness Society between 1995 and 2005 and Wildlife Specialist for the National Audubon Society between 1990 and 1995. Both of these positions were in Washington, D.C. Jim graduated from Princeton University with honors in biology and he received a master’s degree in environmental studies from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.