People

My name is Kaliyah, and I live in Charlotte, North Carolina! I am an AmeriCorps member serving in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the City of Charlotte Landscape Management Division. My technical title is the City of Arborist Community Engagement Coordinator, and I help serve the city by creating, designing, and leading projects and campaigns that engage the community with street trees and other sustainable projects that help improve the quality of life of citizens. Outside of my work, I enjoy hiking and camping with my friends, and making weekend trips back home to West Virginia to hang out with my family! I also really enjoy music, birding, and here recently I've picked back up nature journaling and observing!

I am the Adopt-A-Stream Director for the state of Mississippi. I am also the Chairman for the MS Environmental Education Alliance (MEEA)

Mountain Watershed Association began its life around a kitchen table. The organization was founded in 1994 to oppose an underground coal mine proposal in the Indian Creek Watershed in the Laurel Highlands of Southwestern Pennsylvania. MWA’s input and organized opposition resulted in the denial of the permit. MWA’s board of directors and dedicated community members realized that to restore the watershed to a viable community, they would have to address the legacy of more than 150 years of extraction and disinvestment in our rural Appalachian region. Since then, MWA has restored more than 70 percent of the Indian Creek Watershed and prevented countless sources of additional pollution in the broader Youghiogheny River Watershed. The organization has expanded to eleven full-time employees, a 17-person volunteer Board of Directors, and more than 2500 members and supporters.

Laureanna brings energy-related activities to teachers across her home state through KEEP - Wisconsin's K-12 Energy Education program. She has a background in elementary and environmental education, and in her free time she writes picture books, hikes, plays board and card games, and dreams of places in the world that she'll visit next.

I am a long-time professor of biology and ES in 4-year and 2-year institutions. In addition, I have experience as an industrial chemical production scientist and as a professional environmental scientist. I volunteer as an environmental scientist as science educator for various NGOs.

Megan Fink serves as the Partnerships & Policy Manager for the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). Working in the field of Environmental Education for over a decade, Megan brings a robust, place-based, outdoor education background to the NAAEE team. She has built enduring working relationships across the Chesapeake Bay watershed and the Mid-Atlantic region. As a graduate of Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Science and Biology, Megan began her career as an Environmental Educator at the North Carolina Aquariums before joining the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) in 2011. Through several program management positions with CBF she led students, teachers, school administrators, and environmental professionals on ecological, cultural, and historical investigations of the Bay. She also managed a statewide leadership program for high school students, teaching them how to become environmental advocates at the local, regional, and national levels.

Megan earned an Executive Master of Natural Resources from Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability in 2020. In 2022-23, she served as Education Director for the Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park, supervising 15 Environmental Education Programs and expanding their reach to 14,000 participants annually. She also initiated and managed a project to launch a brand-new, nature-based preschool and served on the Maryland State Department of Education’s Workgroup to develop statewide Outdoor Preschool licensing standards. 

Throughout her career, Megan has designed programs that inspire participants to act on behalf of their local natural resources and enhance people’s understanding of and connection to the natural world through compelling environmental education experiences. In her spare time, she can often be found hiking, gardening, paddling, and spending time with her loved ones, including her dog, Ruby, splashing around the Bay watershed!