Jennifer Darnell
Board Chair
Jen has a B.A. in Chemistry from Bowdoin College and a Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University in New York City. She
recently retired from her position as a Research Associate Professor at Rockefeller where she worked for 33 years. She
is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Jen is a leading authority on Fragile X Syndrome, the most
common monogenic cause of intellectual disability and autism. She is one of four Board members of the Simons Initiative
for the Developing Brain at the Univ. of Edinburgh. Jen has been coming annually to the Crested Butte area for 45 years
and is now a full-time resident. When one of her sons, Peter, was in high school, he assisted a RMBL scientist as a
research assistant. It was a transformative experience for both Jen and Peter. Jen brings to the Board the perspective of
a lab scientist who has been working at an independent research institution, a Crested Butte resident and former second
homeowner, and who has been involved in private science philanthropy.
Berry Brosi
Board President
Berry Brosi is a Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Washington, where his research program is focused on understanding how ecological networks will respond to global environmental changes, with an emphasis on integrating empirical field data with mathematical and computational modeling. His lab primarily uses plant-pollinator interactions as a model system. Prior to joining the University of Washington in 2020, Brosi was on the faculty at Emory University for 10 years. Brosi grew up in a small town in Kentucky in a large family (he has six siblings) and was one of two graduates from his high school class to attend college out of state. Dr. Brosi earned a BA from Wesleyan University; a Master of Environmental Science degree from Yale University; and his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University. He also conducted post-doctoral work at Stanford. Brosi is the author of over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has received over $5 million in research funding from a variety of federal agencies and foundations. He was one of 75 scientists from around the world selected to serve as a lead author on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Thematic assessment of pollinators, pollination and food production. Brosi is passionate about training the next generation of scientists and was honored with a University-wide advising and mentoring award at Emory, and currently serves as the director of the Biology PhD program at UW, a position he also held for the Ecology and Evolution PhD program at Emory. Brosi began working at RMBL 15 years ago, when he first joined the Emory faculty. He has served on the RMBL facilities committee since 2018 and is currently chair of the RMBL research committee.
Kurt Giesselman
Treasurer
Kurt has a B.S. in Early Childhood Education, a B.S. in Chemistry, an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia, and an Executive MBA from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked extensively in the corporate sector with an emphasis on operations and business development, including holding the positions of Senior Director of Business Development for both Honeywell International and Siemens Energy and Environmental Solutions, as well as Vice President for Consulting and Client Services for Constellation Energy. He has extensive nonprofit experience, including serving on the development committee of the Indianapolis Zoo and the Facilities Committee for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Kurt splits his time between Crested Butte and Florida, where he and his wife own a horse farm managed by their daughter. Kurt remains involved with several local organizations, including previously serving as President of the Gunnison-Crested Butte Tourism Association board, Board Chair of the ICELab, a local business accelerator, and Board Chair of the Mt. Crested Butte Water and Sanitation District. He helped found E3, a Gunnison Valley education non-profit. He was the first Board Chair of the RMBL board. He has owned a home in Crested Butte since 1999 and has been Chair of his HOA's Board of Trustees since its founding in 2000. Kurt brings a strong background in finance and development to the RMBL board, along with his long involvement with RMBL.
Susan Avery
Susan has a BA in Physics from Michigan State University, an MS in Physics and PhD in atmospheric science from the Univ. of Illinois. With faculty positions at the Univ. of Illinois and the Univ. of Colorado, her research focused on atmospheric circulation and precipitation, climate variability and water resources, and the development of new radar techniques and instruments for remote sensing. She went on to hold numerous scientific leadership positions, including but not limited to serving as Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UC-Boulder, President of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, President of the American Meteorological Society, and currently chairs the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research. She brings substantial experience with board governance in scientific institutions, along with experience in both strategic planning and governance.
Dan Blumstein
Dan graduated with honors in Environmental Biology and Environmental Conservation from the University of Colorado
Boulder and received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Animal Behavior at the University of California Davis. He had postdoctoral
fellowships in Germany, Kansas and Australia before joining UCLA as a faculty member in 2001 where he is currently a
Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (he was Department Chair for seven years) and in the
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He worked at RMBL as a postdoc and took over day-to-day
management of the long-term marmot project in 2001. His research incorporates many students and he has co-authored
papers with nearly 200 undergraduates. He has received major teaching and research awards both from UCLA and the
Animal Behavior Society, and he is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society. He has been an editor or on the editorial
boards of a variety of scholarly journals and is currently a member of the Faculty of 1000. Dan served on the RMBL board
between 2004 and 2008 and was the Secretary in 2007 and 2008.
James (Jim) Brogan
After earning his BA in Biology from Indiana University, Jim served four years active duty in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. He then earned his JD from the Villanova University School of Law in 1981 and entered private practice with a trial firm. He joined Piper & Marbury in 1994, which evolved into today’s DLA Piper, a firm regularly ranked among the largest in the world. Jim’s trial practice focuses on issues related to engineering, biology and ceramics, among others. Most recently, Jim chaired the firm’s U.S. and then global litigation practice group for 8 years and served on its executive committee and/or policy committee for 16 years. He has served for and chaired numerous legal and community boards near his primary home in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. Jim and his wife, Doris, enjoy a second home in Crested Butte, actively support many of its community organizations and have witnessed the value of RMBL through the experience of their youngest, Mairead, who has engaged a variety of the opportunities offered at RMBL over the last six years.
Noah Eckhouse
Noah Eckhouse is a business and technology executive turned investor, mentor, and consultant with 35 years of experience across software, hardware, and engineering. After a career spanning product development, sales, executive leadership, and mergers and acquisitions, he retired from Bentley Systems (NASDAQ: BSY) following its successful 2020 IPO. His current work focuses on the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) sector, the outdoor industry, and emerging orbital and deep-space technologies.
Earlier in his career, Noah directed the Marine Instrumentation and Computation Laboratory in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research included instrumentation and field programs involving America’s Cup sailboats, U.S. Navy submarines, and ship-wake detection using synthetic aperture radar. He also taught undergraduate courses and co-authored several scientific papers.
Noah currently serves as Executive-in-Residence at Aurelia Foundry, an MIT Media Lab–affiliated deep-space investment fund, where he sits on the investment committee and multiple portfolio company boards.
In Gunnison County, he has served as board chair of ICELab, VP of TAPP and volunteers with several local organizations, including Crested Butte Nordic and Crested Butte Search and Rescue.
Ella Fahrlander
Ella holds a BS in Business Administration with a focus in Marketing from Colorado State University and an MBA from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She began her professional career at the Adaptive Sports Center in Crested Butte, CO and later served in an executive role at the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado for nearly a decade. Her development experience also includes positions at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State
University. In the fall of 2023, Ella returned home to Gunnison County. Ella is thrilled to be back in the Gunnison Valley as the Assistant Vice President of Development at Western Colorado University. In this role, she leads the development team and oversees initiatives, including annual, major, and planned giving efforts. With over two decades of experience in philanthropic development and nonprofit management, Ella is passionate about the outdoors and dedicated to promoting education to empower individuals and communities. Outside of her professional life, Ella enjoys mountain biking, skiing, horseback riding, literature, music, and spending quality time with her family and friends. She brings extensive experience in fundraising, nonprofit leadership, and collaborating with nonprofit boards.
Hamish Greig
With a PhD in Ecology from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, Hamish is a Professor
of Stream Ecology and the Associate Director of the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine in Orono. He served as the graduate coordinator for the interdisciplinary Ecology and Environmental Science program
(UMaine’s largest research-focused graduate program), and is on the editorial board of the leading aquatic
journal, Freshwater Science. Hamish began his research at RMBL during graduate school in 2004, and has continued his work on community and ecosystem processes in high elevation wetlands at the Mexican Cut Nature Preserve ever since.
Hamish has served on RMBL’s research committee since 2021, and as a PI, has mentored 14 undergraduate students, 3 graduate students and two postdocs at RMBL. Along with his expertise in freshwater science research and education, Hamish brings the first-hand experience of a PI living at RMBL with a young family, and has also navigated the opportunities and challenges brought by cross-generational transitions in long-term research programs at the lab. His interest in serving on the RMBL board is driven by the desire to advance scientific excellence at RMBL while promoting a constructive, nurturing, and family-supportive environment.
John Haley
With an M.D. in Ophthalmology from the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School, John has operated a private practice in Ophthalmology in Garland, Texas since 1976. He is a Full Clinical Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas, with an appointment starting in 1976. He is a Fellow in both the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Ophthalmology and has also been a member of the Texas Physician Advisory Council to Blue Cross/Blue Shield since 2004. He is also the founding partner of, and on the board of directors of, Medinetworx, a small and growing firm that installs and operates cloud-based computer systems for medical offices. John is on the Executive Board for Southern Methodist University’s Deadman College and has assisted in raising funds among alumni. John and his wife, Margie, have visited Colorado since early childhood and have been regular visitors to Crested Butte for 40+ years and have been second homeowners in Crested Butte for 25 years. He has been actively involved in a number of Crested Butte nonprofits during that time, including the Crested Butte Land Trust, the High Country Citizen’s Alliance, and the local radio station.
Carol M. Johnson
Carol Johnson served on the RMBL Board from 2006-2015. Carol is trained as a lawyer and worked for over 30 years for Massachusetts Mutual, a large financial services organization. With that company she served as an investment lawyer and also led several non-legal departments. After retirement from that firm, she worked for 13 years as the founding executive director of a nonprofit arts organization. While growing up, Carol and her brothers spent many summers in Gothic with their parents and their grandfather, RMBL’s founder, John C. Johnson. The siblings all worked on the RMBL work crew (Carol in the dining hall). Carol met her husband at Gothic during the time he was conducting research for his dissertation, often serving as his field assistant. The couple now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and has a second home in Gunnison.
Kate Maher
Kate Maher is a Professor of Earth System Science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. She also serves as a Faculty Director in Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), where she works at the interface of science, decision-making, and systems design. Kate’s research focuses on how natural systems regulate carbon and water, with an emphasis on translating process-based understanding into actionable climate solutions. She combines field observations, physics-based modeling, and data-driven approaches to evaluate how carbon moves through soils, watersheds, and ecosystems, and how these processes can be measured and represented in policy and emerging carbon markets. Her work spans water quality, managed aquifer recharge, soil carbon, and nature-based climate solutions, with a growing focus on how scientific measurement frameworks can support more rigorous environmental decision-making. Kate began working at RMBL in 2015, studying watershed-scale carbon cycling, water quality, and the role of high-elevation ecosystems such as fens. More recently, her work has expanded to include beaver-driven watershed restoration and its implications for hydrology and carbon dynamics across mountain landscapes. RMBL has been central to this work, providing a setting where long-term ecological observations and process-based science can inform broader questions about climate and water resilience. Kate is a recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and her work on the carbon cycle is featured in a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow with the U.S. Geological Survey prior to joining Stanford. Kate is a part-time resident of Crested Butte with her husband, Matt Rothe. She brings to the Board a perspective that connects long-term, place-based ecological research with emerging needs in climate policy, water resource management, and environmental markets.
Lara Souza
Lara has a BA in Communications and an MS in Biology from Appalachian State University and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee. After postdoctoral positions at the Univ. of Tenn. and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory she has been a faculty member at the Univ. of OK since 2012 where she is currently an Associate Professor and Director of the Oklahoma Biological Survey. She is a plant ecologist that focuses on global change impacts on plant community dynamics and the functioning of ecosystems. Lara has served as Associate Editor for Plant Ecology, the Journal for Applied Ecology, Ecology and Ecological Monographs. She has been an active scientist at RMBL since 2012, serving on several committees, including Diversity and Douglass Distinguished Lecturer committees. She brings to the Board her perspective as a scientist who lives in Gothic during the summer, as well as her experiences with leadership and administration in the sciences and overall broadening participation in STEM.
Ken Williams
With a B.S. in Geology, an M.S. in Geophysics, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy & Management from the University of California, Berkeley, Ken is a staff geological scientist in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California. He serves as the Program Lead for Environmental Remediation and Water Resources at Berkeley Lab. He serves as the Deputy Lead of Berkeley Lab's Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area project, which works through RMBL and is focused on understanding how mountainous systems retain and release water, nutrients, carbon, and metals in response to climate perturbations, such as drought and early snowmelt. He has been a pioneer in the field of biogeophysics, with a particular emphasis on the development of electrochemically-based techniques for characterizing subsurface microbial activity. He brings a unique perspective as a biogeochemist working at RMBL, with interests spanning the fields of geology, geochemistry, hydrology, and microbiology.
Brian Wildes
Brian earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Southern Methodist University in 1972, an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado in 1974, and an M.B.A. degree in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1976. Brian earned his C.P.A. in 1977 and his C.F.P. in 1986. Brian is currently the Managing Member of a handful of firms that focus on equity investment, oil and gas exploration, and the use of biological techniques for managing waste. Over the past ten years Brian has consulted for three public oil and gas exploration firms and has been the managing general partner of private equity oil and gas exploration, development and mineral acquisition funds. One of his firms is developing biological techniques for the separation and refinement of rare earth elements and the purification of water. Previously Brian served as an Oil and Gas Tax Specialist with Haskins & Sells, and spent 14 years as the C.F.O. of a metal alloy distributor that designed and manufactured downhole drilling and logging tools for the oil and gas industry that are used in today's offshore and horizontal drilling operations. Brian and his wife Marcella live in Dallas, and spend time in Crested Butte. Brian began serving on RMBL's Finance Committee in 2016 and he brings financial expertise to the Board.