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Our Directors
Rachel Riemann Akera – Rachel lives with her husband, Atsushi, and 2 children on the Rensselaer Plateau
in Grafton, who all enjoy cross-country skiing, hiking, backpacking, kayaking, camping, and just plain
exploring in the woods. She is a research forester/geographer with the US Forest Service who specializes
in remote sensing, spatial analysis, spatial modeling, and integrative research to improve our ability
to understand and monitor forested ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide. Rachel was one
of the founding members and is currently the president of Boundless Woods, LLC, a community group that
formed to purchase a threatened piece of land overlooking Big Bowman Pond in Taborton, NY and created
a real “Community Forest” through the power of working and sharing resources together. She works with
the local schools and the Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center, looking for grants and leading
groups to increase opportunities for our urban and rural children and their families to integrate the
outdoors into their education and daily life. Rachel is currently serving on the board of directors
of the Susan Odell Taylor School in Troy, NY. Rachel has been an active member in the RPA since its inception.
Jim Bonesteel – Jim lives with his wife Jill and 3 children on the Rensselaer Plateau in Stephentown.
He is a software developer by trade and proprietor of
Bonesteel Consulting Services, LLC,
which specializes in database systems, robotics, industrial control
systems and web development. Jim has extensive experience in the wilderness of the eastern and western
United States; camping, backpacking, climbing and canoeing and has experience leading trips and teaching
outdoor classes. He has over 15 years of experience as the president of the board of directors of the
Friends of the Dyken Pond Center, Ltd, where he has led meetings, participated in setting the direction
and taken the lead in a handful of successful land acquisition projects. He serves on the board of
directors of the Mountain Road School in New Lebanon, NY and has been an active volunteer as an EMT
for the Stephentown Fire Dept ambulance since he moved to the Plateau in 1998. Jim has been the chair
of the RPA since the summer of 2007 and became president when the RPA incorporated in Oct 2008.
Doree Cox – Doree (coming soon).
Fred DeMay – Fred and his wife Mona have lived on the Rensselaer Plateau
in the Taborton area for almost 30 years. Professionally, Fred is an independent educational consultant
after recently retiring from the NYS Education Department where he was the State Coordinator for Special
Education Policy, Program Development and Interagency Collaboration. Fred’s interest and involvement with
the RPA grew from his love of outdoor activities such as hiking and climbing, camping, trail-running,
snowshoeing, Telemark and XC skiing, kayaking, scuba, biking, boating, golf and the care and stewardship
of their 74 acre homestead. Their 150 year-old house has been renovated for efficiency and comfort,
gardens established for produce and beauty, natural rock transformed into walls and features for landscaping,
and the forest managed for wildlife habitat, wood products and recreation. Fred is a member of The Friends
of Dyken Pond, ADK, ADK 46ers, NY Forest Owners Association, and the Mohawk-Hudson Cycling Club. He is
also active as the Chair of the Sand Lake Fire District #3 (Taborton) Board of Fire Commissioners and the
Mayfield Yacht Club Board of Directors. When not busy on the trails, Fred builds and restores boats and
is a U.S. Coast Guard licensed Captain.
Jim de Waal Malefyt – Jim lives in Poestenkill with his wife and one of their three children. Jim has a
B.A. in Environmental Science and in Biology and a M.S. in Biology. For the past 30 years Jim has lived
in Rensselaer County and works for the NYS Dept. of Public Service supervising the environmental review
of power plants and electric and gas transmission lines. For the past 10 years he has been a member of
the Conservation Advisory Council for the Town of Poestenkill. He has also been a trustee for Loudonville
Community Church and a former officer of the Tackawasick Bird Dog Club of Nassau. Jim enjoys birding and the
outdoors and is currently on a quest to climb the highest 115 mountains in the Northeast over 4,000 feet.
He is an Adirondack 46er and belongs to the Catskill 3500 Club.
Francille Egbert - Francille lives on the Rensselaer Plateau in Berlin. As a Hospice Nurse and Community
Health Nurse she has a lifelong interest in community and environmental health. She is a Board Member of
the Rensselaer Land Trust and helped to start the Rensselaer Plateau Alliance as a committee of the Rensselaer
Land Trust. Her long time interest in woodlands has led to volunteering in outdoors education with Dyken Pond
and Grafton Lakes State Park. She helped develop a new trail map for the Capital District Wildlife Management
Area and Cherry Plains State Park. Being outdoors in any weather keeps her hiking, backpacking, snowshoeing,
and skiing. She shares a love of history, music and bird watching with her 2 grown children Emily and Daniel.
She is secretary of the Rensselaer Plateau Alliance.
Richard Gibbs – Growing up on a Minnesota farm, Dick has an abiding interest in the importance of agriculture,
value of open space, and importance of outdoor recreation. In high school his flock of sheep numbered 150
before he moved to raising purebred Hampshire hogs and exhibited Minnesota state champions through participation
in Future Farmers of America. Pursuing an engineering track, he received his B.Ch.E. from the University of
Minnesota in 1966. Married to his high-school sweetheart, Shari, in 1966, they settled in Troy where he completed
his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Rensselaer in 1971. During a thirty-five year career with New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation he built the NYS programs dedicated to reducing pollution from motor
vehicles and he became the first Director of the NYS Bureau of Mobile Sources. After becoming an insulin-dependent
diabetic at age 32, he incorporated diabetes as a positive factor contributing to a love of a wide range of
outdoor activities and life-long fitness. Dick and Shari are dedicated road bicyclists active in the Mohawk-Hudson
Cycling Club and average a couple thousand miles each year, frequenting the highlands of the Rensselaer Plateau.
Mountain biking on trails became a large part of Dick’s life: He led the first MTB ride to traverse the Rensselaer
Plateau. On the Board of the Friends of Grafton Lakes State Park, he is Co-Chair of the FGLSP group working to
restore the Dickinson Hill Fire Tower in Grafton, NY. He was selected to be the interim leader of a new Friends
group at Cherry Plain State Park. An avid alpine skier, he also enjoys back country skiing, snow shoeing and
just plain walking. In “spare time” he and Shari maintain and share trails on their farm in North Greenbush
where for many years they have hosted a “Thanksgiving in the Woods” event attended by nearly one hundred people,
held regardless of weather. Active in the New York Forest Owners Association (NYFOA), they heat their home
with a clean-burning “wood gasifier” connected to a heat storage system. His range of interests all find
connection to the mission and work of the RPA, but take a second place to love of family and four grand children
who think [mistakenly] that “Papa D knows everything”. Still professionally active, Dick is co-chair of an
annual Summer Symposium Series on critical energy and environmental technology and policy issues, organized
through the MIT Energy Initiative in conjunction with NESCAUM (Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management)
in Boston
Shari Gibbs – An avid cyclist, Shari is often found riding her bike on the Rensselaer Plateau during spring,
summer and fall. In the winter months, she’s on her skis or snowshoes traversing either the Plateau or the
Hidley Farm in North Greenbush where she lives with her husband, Dick. Coming from Minnesota farm families,
they continue to work toward the preservation of agricultural and forest land. Possessing a strong conservation
ethic, they share their love of open space with others by maintaining trails for recreational use on their farm
and annually hosting “Thanksgiving Under the Hemlocks.” Shari volunteers her time as ride leader for the Mohawk
Hudson Cycling Club (MHCC) and the Friends of Grafton Lakes and Cherry Plain State Parks. She presently serves
as vice-president of the RPA. Although officially a “retired” reading consultant and teacher (East Greenbush CS),
she continues to capture every teachable moment and love of reading with her four grandkids.
Lawrence Howard – Lawrence Howard is a partner in the firm of
Shulman, Howard and McPherson, LLP
and has made a
career of promoting progressive land use planning in the Hudson and Mohawk River Valleys, the Capital District
and the Southern Adirondacks. He has been providing professional legal and planning services to public, private
and non-profit clients since 1996 including help with land use, zoning, real estate, wills and estates, environmental
and geographical impact analysis. With a focus on collaboration with local governments, land trusts and the
agricultural community, he has worked to preserve farmland, to preserve open space and to protect land on a
regional scale. Working with public and private clients, he has advised innovative developers in their efforts
to plan mixed use developments and conservation subdivisions, counseled municipal planning and zoning boards,
and drafted numerous local zoning laws. Lawrence Howard holds a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning from
Pratt Institute and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School and has spoken on land use and zoning issues at events
sponsored by the American Planning Association, the Land Trust Alliance, the New York Association of Towns, and
the New York Planning Federation. He is also a principal of Blueberry Ridge Stewardship Services, LLC, which was
formed to facilitate and expand land conservation through the provision of professional planning, monitoring and
documentation services.
Lisa Hoyt – Lisa is Director of the Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center
in Grafton. She currently lives down the road from the Center, but for many years lived on the property as
caretaker along with her husband, Pierce and their two teenage sons. The entire family enjoys the outdoors
and gets a lot of enjoyment from bushwhacking through the woods with their dog Sophie as well as bicycling,
cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, alpine skiing, kayaking and hiking. Lisa has a B.S. in Forestry from the
College of Environmental Science and Forestry and has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years.
Lisa shares her love of the outdoors with youth, their families and adults in a variety of outdoor education
programs for the public, outreach programs and a summer nature camp for youth. Her biggest passion is to connect
children to nature “in their own backyards” so that they can become knowledgeable adults who care for the land
and the environment. She has been a member of the RPA since its inception and is also a member of the New York
State Outdoor Education Association, Rensselaer Land Trust, New York Forest Owners Association and the Friends
of the Dyken Pond Center.
David Hunt – David is an ecologist concentrating primarily in holistic, conservation,
natural community, and deep ecology, and specializing in landscape ecology, aquatic ecology, rare species, botany,
sustainable & subsistence living, ecological restoration, education that fosters ecological literacy, and intuitive
& natural medicines. He has been self-employed as "Ecological Intuition & Medicine", a low-income, low-consumption,
non-profit/volunteer venture since 2001, with its mission to promote a sustainable co-existence between humans and
other species in nature. Major work efforts include 1) building of a "greenprint" for Rensselaer County designed
to identify the areas most important to preserving all the native species of the county, 2) building and tracking
of information on species rare to Rensselaer County and natural communities exemplary within the county, 3) building
of information and material towards a biodiversity conservation plan and vision for the Rensselaer Plateau, 4)
voluntary landowner agreements to help preserve areas on the Rensselaer Plateau important for biodiversity, 5)
general inventories of ecologically important features throughout the region, 6) restorations of impacted streams,
and 7) ceremonies to deepen human connections with nature. He was employed for 13 years as a community ecologist
for The Nature Conservancy and New York Natural Heritage Program. His education includes botany degrees from
University of Georgia (Ph.D) and Cornell University (B.A.), specializing in the classification and ecology of oaks.
He is home-schooling a 6-year old son and minimizing family expenses by "living off the land" as much as possible
via vegetable gardening, fruit harvesting, wildcrafting, sustainable firewood harvest, and maple syruping, while
in balance with trying to maintain the family's 32 acres of mostly forest as a public nature preserve which includes
areas of incipient old-growth forest, a hemlock swamp, and stream.
Walter Kersch – Walter and his wife Terri have lived in East Poestenkill on the Rensselaer Plateau since 1969.
A mathematics teacher, with advanced degrees in guidance, counseling and educational administration, he served
as Junior - Senior High School Principal in Berlin. His love of the woods, streams and natural environment, along
with his enjoyment and hobby of ski instructor, led to the discovery of a new passion: Pineridge Cross-Country
Ski Area. Pineridge opened in 1984, and the development of new ski and snowshoe trails, using the natural beauty
of the landscape, has been his work, discovery and play since that time. After retiring from education, Walter
continued his interest in forest management and conservation by earning certification as a Master Forest Owner
through Cornell. (MFO's are trained and available to the public for free walks and visits to help all landowners
become better stewards of their woodlots.) He has served as Past Chairman and member of the Conservation Advisory
Council for the Town of Poestenkill for the past 15 years. He currently serves as treasurer for the RPA and looks
at the RPA to educate landowners regarding their forests and to help towns provide options for private landowners
to preserve their working forests.
Yvonne KeefeYvonne is the Communications Administrator for Cornell University
Cooperative Extension of Rensselaer County. She is involved in special event planning, project development,
marketing design and communications. As the regional vice chair of the Regional Marketing Committee she has
created logos, promotional brochures, and websites. Yvonne has a BA in Communications and has worked as a graphic
designer for over 15 years. As an artist she has found her inspiration from nature and has painted and photographed
many landscapes capturing nature at its finest moments. She enjoys hiking with her husband Mark and their two dogs
Keegan and Cena.
Stephen Pentak – Stephen is Professor Emeritus of Art, and a past Associate Dean of the College of the Arts at Ohio
State University. He is a painter (his work is influenced by the landscape of the plateau) and exhibits at Kathryn
Markel Fine Art in New York. Pentak and his wife Debbie live along the Kinderhook in Stephentown where he also has
his studio.
Robert Stegemann – Bob’s career has focused on the policy and legislative arenas
for conservation and management of natural resources. He had a long career with International Paper as Regional
Manager of Government Affairs and Manager of Sustainability. He has been involved in many land conservation
deals in the Adirondacks, and guided the creation of International Paper Dillon Park, a wilderness park of people
with disabilities. Bob previously worked as Executive Director of the Empire State Forest Products Association
and for the Tug Hill Commission in Watertown, NY. He was a long time trustee of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy
and Land Trust. Bob holds a MS in Resources Management and a BA in Economics. Bob and his wife, Eileen, live in
Poestenkill and have two children.
Mark Wehnau – Mark lives in Averill Park with his wife Rose. He works at Hudson Valley Comunity College in charge
of Media Equipment Distribution. Mark has very actively ridden the equine trails in New York State. He is a member
of Friends of Grafton Lakes State Park, and of Cherry Plains State Park. Mark sits as one of three equine
representatives to the New York Trails Council Advisory Board. Mark is a strong advocate for multi use trails in
New York. Mark is also a Volunteer fireman in Averill Park Fire Company.
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