About Audubon Upper Mississippi River

Debbie was most recently President and CEO of DA Reynolds Group LLC, specializing in supply chain management.  Before forming her own consulting group, Debbie was a Senior Vice President of Merchandise Planning for Marshall Fields and a senior executive of Target Corporation.  Debbie was a board member, and has been board chair, for Milkweed Editions, a literary non-profit press, and has served on the board of the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota.  She is also a board member for the International Wolf Center.  Debbie is an avid photographer and travels extensively to photograph birds throughout the world.

Favorite bird: Great Horned Owl Owls Play Great Horned Owl hoots of pair sound

Paul became interested in birds at a young age while watching them at his bird feeder and in the prairies and ponds near his rural home in Cottonwood, Minnesota.  The local Presbyterian minister wrote a column in the community newspaper each week about native birds and what he was seeing.  He inspired Paul to look for the same birds.  An Audubon bird book helped Paul with bird identification.  Paul has been active in birding and environmental issues ever since.  Receiving an MBA from the University of Minnesota, his career was in reinsurance, but he found time to serve on the Boards of the Sierra Club’s North Star Chapter, Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union, and the Minnesota Land Trust.  Paul has also been an active member in The Nature Conservancy and remains an enthusiastic birder.

Rebecca has enjoyed watching and learning about birds since she was a young girl growing up in South Dakota.  She has been a community volunteer serving on numerous boards, including The Ripley Memorial Foundation which funded women’s and children’s causes, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, the Abbott/Northwestern Institutional Review Board (IRB), and the Allina Executive IRB Council advocating for patients’ rights in human research, as governed by federal regulations.  Rebecca is an avid wildlife photographer with a specialty in bird photography.  Her images have been widely published and are often used by conservation and education organizations, both within and outside of the United States.  She received her B.S. in Psychology from San Francisco State University.  Rebecca worked for 13 years as a paralegal in major San Francisco and Minneapolis law firms before briefly attending the University of Minnesota Law School, but her 1981 marriage to a widower with three teenage children took her down a different path.

Favorite bird: ! Wood Thrush Thrushes Play Wood Thrush song sound

Doug is a certified Wildlife Biologist with 40 years of experience in wildlife management, research, and education; habitat acquisition; and wildlife agency administration. He received a B.S. degree in Wildlife Management and M.S. degree in Wildlife Biology from South Dakota State University. Most recent he served as Wildlife Diversity Program Coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Des Moines. He is President of Iowa Audubon and Iowa Coordinator for the National Breeding Bird Survey.

Favorite bird: Tufted Titmouse Chickadees and Titmice Play Tufted Titmouse songs #1 sound

Until his retirement in early 2015, Ron served for nine years as a program officer for The McKnight Foundation’s Mississippi River Program, which carries out the Foundation’s efforts to protect and restore the Mississippi River and key tributaries.  Before coming to the Foundation, he served as executive director of Minnesota Environmental Partnership, a coalition of environmental and conservation organizations working to protect Minnesota’s natural resources. Earlier in his career, Ron co-founded the sustainable agriculture organization, Land Stewardship Project (LSP), serving as executive director for 11 years.  His interest in birds goes back to his childhood where he observed the wildlife on his uncle’s diversified farm in northwestern Iowa and learned to identify the prairie birds that nested in the farm’s pasture and the woodpeckers in the farmyard grove.

Favorite bird: American Goldfinch Finches Play American Goldfinch song #1 sound

Tim is a founder and the managing editor of the sustainability site at Thomson Reuters. He is also Director of Sustainability at Thomson Reuters and has ongoing engagement with thought-leaders across a wide spectrum of NGO and for-profit partners. Most recently, he was a participant at the first global meeting of United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and is partnering with a number of policy setting groups, including UN Global Compact, UN Environment Programme, and International Union for Conservation of Nature on making transparent the most important trends related to risk and sustainability. He is a lawyer by training and has spent most of his career working with diverse collaborators to build new products and initiatives. He is the former president of the Saint Paul Audubon Society.

Viola is the President of the Prairie Lakes Audubon Chapter in Alexandria, Minnesota.  She is a retired food scientist and computer technician, having worked for General Mills and Diamond Vogel Paint. As a child, Viola grew up in north central Iowa where she found her love of watching birds on her family’s farm. After moving to Alexandria in 2013, she became involved in her local Audubon Chapter where she enjoyed connecting with others to learn about birds in the area and practice bird conservation. After the sudden passing of her chapter’s president, she stepped into the leadership role and also began working with other chapter presidents and the Audubon Minnesota Iowa Missouri office. One of her greatest challenges as an Audubon volunteer was steering her chapter through the COVID-19 pandemic, but she leaned into her technology background and helped the chapter flourish by introducing the use of electronic newsletters and Zoom meetings to keep members connected.

Favorite bird: Black-capped Chickadee Chickadees and Titmice Play Black-capped Chickadee song sound

David is the founder of GradStaff, an outsourced college recruiting service that he sold in 2017.  He is an active community volunteer, serving on the boards of Rock Island Company, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Woodhill Country Club.  David is a past board member of The Nature Conservancy of Minnesota, Twin Cities Public Television (Board Chair), the US Trust Advisory Board, Dietzgen Corporation, and the Civic Leadership Foundation.  He is a graduate of Yale University and received an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  David is a native Minnesotan and enjoys outdoor activities across all four Minnesota Seasons in his free-time

Favorite bird: Eastern Bluebird Thrushes Play Eastern Bluebird song sound