Chapter Home - Volunteer Leaders
Volunteer Leaders
Borden Beck
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
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Borden is a born and bred Oregonian whose parents were deeply involved in conservation issues during his formative years, so he had good role modeling as a youth. He was a bit of a nature boy, fascinated by the biological world. After college, he taught outdoor and environmental courses in a variety of settings before settling down in a 25-year career of middle school teacher in Oregon City where he has taught science, technology, and most recently, woodshop. Borden plays African music in a marimba band, eats a vegetarian diet for sociopolitical reasons, and dreams of revisiting New Zealand someday.
Borden became involved with the Sierra Club in 1994. After joining the Club as part of an Earth Day event, he wandered into a meeting of the High Desert Committee (HDC) merely out of curiosity, and that connection has remained the focus of his involvement with the Club. Borden has always had a passion for exploring the dry side of the mountains, and finds the views of the Sagebrush Sea to be most inspiring. He has led trips with the HDC for many years, some focusing on wilderness study areas, some designed to inspire and expose new folks to the high desert, and some focused on service such as pulling fence.
His primary goal in working within the Sierra Club has been to help usher in wilderness protection for the remaining wild areas of Oregon’s High Desert. That said, his interest and participation within the Club has inevitably spread to deeper involvement and intimate awareness of the broad range of environmental issues impacting Oregon. Borden’s advice to all potential Sierra Club volunteers is to “find an issue you are passionate about, find or create that niche in the Club, and engage.”
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Nancy Hatch
Executive Committee
(Columbia Group Representative)
Nancy Hatch
Nancy has been active in parts of the Sierra Club’s mission her whole life. Growing up, she spent a lot of time “exploring and enjoying the planet.” She regularly went camping, hiking, backpacking, and exploring with her family, and developed a love of the outdoors. As an adult, Nancy has continued to enjoy the great outdoors and has become active with the “protect the planet” part of the Sierra Club’s mission.
After moving to Portland in 2001, Nancy first became active with the Columbia Singles Group and then started volunteering with the Building Environmental Communities campaign. She was elected to the Columbia Group’s Executive Committee in 2005 and 2007. For the past year Nancy has been the Columbia Group’s Political Committee chair.
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Erica Maharg
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
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Erica Maharg Grand Canyon National Park
Erica has been active with the Sierra Club since 2004 as both a staff member and a volunteer. After graduating from Duke University where she spent most of her time organizing students around labor and other progressive issues on campus, she accepted a position with the Sierra Club in Columbus, Ohio.
During her first year on staff, she organized volunteers for an environmental voter education campaign for the 2004 Presidential Election. After the campaign ended, Erica transferred to the Portland, Oregon, office to work for the Building Environmental Communities campaign. She worked with a group of dedicated volunteers on the campaign to end toxic mixing zones in Oregon’s rivers.
After three years as an organizer with the Sierra Club, Erica entered law school at Lewis and Clark School of Law where she is focusing on environmental law. Throughout her time in law school, Erica has remained active with the Club as a volunteer, as a member of the Columbia Group Executive Committee, and currently as a member of the Oregon Chapter Executive Committee.
Erica has also been the Oregon Chapter’s Global Trade issue coordinator and has worked with Sierra Club partners in labor on issues concerning international trade. She is “grateful for the opportunity to work with Sierra Club members and volunteers to protect our communities, our state, and our Earth.”
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Wes Kempfer
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
Legislative Committee (Chair)
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Wes Kempfer was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He learned an appreciation of the natural world and the outdoors going on camping and fishing trips with his parents and siblings, and while exploring the woods and streams at the edge of the suburban sprawl where he spent most of his childhood. His first awareness of the seriousness our environmental predicament came when watching all-day television coverage of the first Earth Day event in 1970. He was suspended from school that day for taking part in a protest against the junior high school dress code.
Wes has had a fascination with science and technology from childhood which eventually led to a career in computer technology. He worked in various aspects of that field most of his adult life. An ever growing concern for the deteriorating global environment led him to earn a B.A in Science from Marylhurst University in 2002 where the focus of his studies was Environmental Science.
The events of the last several years have motivated Wes to become increasingly more active in working with others in trying to reverse the destruction of the planetary systems on which we depend. Wes has three adult children and two grand children. He now lives with several loving house plants and spends his spare time gardening, cycling around town, and playing guitar and mandolin.
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Marilyn Miller
Executive Committee
(Juniper Group Representative)
Marilyn Miller
Marilyn has served on the Executive Committee of the Juniper Group of Sierra Club for over seven years, and currently serves as the group’s Conservation Chair and Treasurer. She has also chaired the Group’s Program Night and Publicity activities. Marilyn has had a deep love of nature for as long as she can remember and is firmly committed to speaking out in any way she can for the protection of wildlife and wildlife habitat.
Marilyn has volunteered thousands of hours during her time with the Sierra Club and promises to continue doing so. Her husband Craig Miller works to protect Oregon’s high desert with the Oregon Natural Desert Association. Together they keep a vegetarian household. Marilyn has two geese and one (100 percent indoor) cat. Marilyn is also an avid birder and nature photographer.
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Ramona Rex
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
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Ramona Rex Half Dome Yosemite National Park
Ramona Rex, a lifelong resident of Beaverton, Oregon, has been active with the Sierra Club since 2000. Her passion for the Club’s mission is matched by her leadership skills. Ramona has served on the Columbia Group Executive Committee, the Columbia Group’s “One Club” Steering Committee, and the Building Environmental Communities Steering Committee.
Ramona was Chair of the Columbia Group in 2004. She is the recipient of the Columbia Group’s Volunteer Award for 2004, and the Oregon Chapter’s Charles Funk Award for 2006.
Ramona’s primary interest focuses on issues of population and the environment. She is the Oregon Chapter’s Population Issue Coordinator, and is in her fifth year on the Sierra Club’s National Global Population and Environment Committee.
Ramona was selected by the Club’s Population Program to visit population, health, and environment programs in Ecuador and the Philippines. Ramona has degrees in Economics and Business Administration from Portland State University.
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Joseph Vaile
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
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Joseph Vaile and Sarah Crater Lake National Park
Joseph is a two-term member of the Executive Committee and serves as chair of the Forest Committee. Joseph’s interest in trees has deep roots.
He is currently employed at the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild) in Ashland, where he coordinates KS Wild’s campaigns, conducts Geographical Information Systems analysis, and participates in regional and national conservation issues.
Joseph graduated with honors from Edgewood College with a degree in biology. He has pursued advanced coursework at Southern Oregon University, and gained experience as a wildlife biologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
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Gretchen Valido
Executive Committee (At-Large Member)
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Growing up on five acres in a rural Chicago suburb, along with family vacations out West, are two important childhood underpinnings for Gretchen’s relationship with nature. She headed to the University of Washington in Seattle after falling in love with the West’s mountains, lived in the Bay Area much of her adult life, and moved to Bend in 1997 where she looks to the sky, mountains, forests, rivers and her garden for her daily connection with nature.
The Sierra Club became Grethchen’s outlet for pent-up frustration with ever-increasing development in Central Oregon, and since early 2002 she has served in various capacities on the Juniper Group Executive Committee: Membership Coordinator, Political Committee Chair, Co-Chair and Chair, and as Chapter Political Committee member. Since 2006 she has served on the Chapter Executive Committee and as Council of Club Leaders delegate, and in 2008 received the Charles Funk Award.
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Shannon Wilson
Executive Committee
(Many Rivers Group Representative)
Shannon Wilson
Shannon grew up in southwest Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains. Being nourished from a tender age on the beauty of the Siskiyous, in the early 1980s he joined a small group of folks to protect the Siskiyou National Forest from strip mining for nickel. In 1991, after working as a wildlife surveyor for the Umpqua National Forest, Shannon moved to Eugene to work in the same capacity for the Bureau of Land Management. However, since the passage of the “salvage logging rider” in 1995, Shannon has worked as a fulltime volunteer to protect the forests, the rivers, and the critters of the Cascadia forests.
Also in 1995, Shannon joined the Many Rivers Group Executive Committee. He continues to work on protecting the Cascadia ecosystem, where he knows his efforts can be the most effective. In October 2006, Shannon and a handful of volunteers embarked on a campaign to beat back the Oregon BLM’s plans to destroy Oregon’s last ancient forests. Shannon’s inspiration for forest protection comes from Ed Abbey, a western writer and environmental activist, who stated it best: “The idea of wildness needs no defense, just more defenders.”
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Jill Workman
Executive Committee (Chair)
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Armed with a passion for nature and a gift of leadership, Jill began her activist work with the Sierra Club in 1990 as a volunteer for the Oregon Chapter’s High Desert Committee. She soon expanded her work to representing the Chapter on the Malheur Lakes Basin Working Committee, and was appointed by Governor Barbara Roberts to the State of Oregon’s Grazing Fee Advisory Committee.
Jill was one of Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s original appointees to the Southeast Oregon Resource Advisory Council, which advises the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, where she served from September 1995 through September 2006 (the final six years as Chair). Additionally, Jill chaired the Steens/Alvord Coalition from inception in 1999 until its sunset in 2005, and represented the Sierra Club in negotiations that led to the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act of 2000.
Jill has served on the Sierra Club’s Oregon Chapter Executive Committee since December 1999, filling the positions of Secretary (2000), Vice Chair (2001-2002), and Chair (2003-present), and providing leadership on the Budget and Personnel Committees. Jill has served in many Sierra Club national leadership positions, including Grazing Task Force member, June 2000 through August 2002; Leadership Development Project member, May 2006 through February 2007; Wildlands Committee Secretary, August 2004 through December 2008; Wilderness & Wildlands Team Secretary, December 2008 through present; America’s Wild Legacy Conservation Initiative Committee Chair, March 2006 through December 2008; Borderlands Team Secretary, December 2008 to present; Resilient Habitats Campaign Team member, October 2008 to present; and America’s Wild Legacy Advisory Team Chair, October 2008 to present. Professionally, Jill is a Vice President in Institutional Trust Services at a major bank.
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Barry Wulff
Barry joined the Sierra Club in 1992 and became the chair of the Marys Peak Group in 1999. Additionally, Barry has served the Club as an active local outings leader and as Chair of the Club’s International Committee. He currently authors the Marys Peak Group weekly email and online newsletter. Barry is professor emeritus of Biology at Eastern Connecticut State University, and has an affiliate appointment at Oregon State University. He resides in Philomath, Oregon, with his wife, Ella May. He has lived and worked in Oregon since 1993.
Barry is an active writer and photographer. As photographer, he specializes in digital as well as black and white silver images. His prints have been displayed in a number of Oregon galleries and appeared in books, journals, and magazines, as well as in organizational promotions.
Barry has long focused his attention on the outdoors. He spent much of his early life in Newfoundland and Labrador. He has led more than fifty-five international tours for Eastern Connecticut State University, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and Bill Russell’s Mountain Tours before moving to Oregon in 1993. He currently leads private nonprofit international hiking tours to NFLD/Labrador, Namibia, South Africa, Iceland, and Norway. He has hiked in nearly thirty countries.
