Ryerson Woods - Ryerson Reads

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Meet the Board
Chairman
	Georgie Boge Geraghty became Chair in 2009 after serving on the Board of Directors for five years. Georgie currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School where she teaches international environmental law on a part-time basis. Previously, Georgie held positions with several conservation organizations, including The Field Museum and The Nature Conservancy of Colorado. Before embarking on a career in conservation, Georgie worked in Corporate Business Development at the General Electric Company. Georgie holds a Master's degree in Forestry and Its Relationship to Land-Use from Oxford University (U.K.) and a law degree from Yale. She has served on the Board of the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts and the Steering Committee of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council. Georgie and her husband, Tom, have four children, all of whom enjoy the many programs available at Ryerson. Family favorites include Halloween Hikes, Maple Syrup Hikes, and spontaneous treks through the woods.
First Vice Chairs
	George A. Ranney is President and CEO of Chicago Metropolis 2020, a nonprofit civic organization created in 1999 by the Commercial Club of Chicago to promote long-term planning, better regional cooperation and smart investment in the Chicago region and its people. George also serves as chair and chief executive of Prairie Holdings Corporation, the firm developing Prairie Crossing, a nationally recognized conservation community in north suburban Grayslake. He served in various capacities over many years for Inland Steel Industries, including vice president for raw materials and also general counsel. He was deputy budget director for the State of Illinois under Governor Richard Ogilvie. George also is senior counsel to the Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown LLP and has served as a trustee of many civic and non-profit organizations including the University of Chicago and Chicago Public Television (WTTW). George is a former trustee of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has known and enjoyed Ryerson Woods his entire life, as his grandparents were Edward and Nora Ryerson. His service on advising boards including Friends started shortly after his grandparents’ gifts to the Forest Preserve in 1972.
	William R. Humphrey, III joined the Board of Directors in 2002, and currently serves as a Vice Chair. Will has brings over twenty five years of broad real estate experience to his work at Ryerson, including sustainable development, investment, transactions, strategic consulting, architecture and conservation with organizations such as Jones Lang LaSalle (LaSalle Partners) and The Conservation Fund, a national land conservation organization, where he served as the Illinois Director. Most recently, he founded Landbridge Advisors to work with corporate, institutional and private landowners to create sustainable strategies for their properties. Will holds a Master of Management degree from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Environmental Design/Architecture degree from the College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado. Will lives with his wife, Ellen, and three sons in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Treasurer
	Mark Moore joined the Board of Directors in 2003 and currently serves as Treasurer. With over 22 years of experience in banking, Mark has spent the past 15 with Harris Bank, most recently as Regional Business Sales Manager in Libertyville. Mark is also chairman of the Village of Libertyville’s Plan Commission. He holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University. Mark is an outdoor enthusiast committed to the conservation of our region’s natural areas, of which Ryerson Woods is a prime example.
Secretary
	Janice Hand is board Secretary. She joined FRW as a Director in 1993. She is currently in her second year as co-chair for the Smith Nature Symposium. Janice is retired from Hewitt Associates, where she was a consultant in various human resources areas for almost 25 years. She holds a B.S. in Economics from Montana State University and a M.S. in Educational Psychology (program evaluation) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She lives in Lincolnshire with her husband, Rick. As a birder, Janice cannot believe her good fortune in living almost next door to one of the premier bird-watching spots in Illinois.
Members		Back to Top
	Megan Beidler joined the FRW Board of Directors in 2007. Although currently a stay-at-home mother, Megan is trained as an architect and worked with Adrian Smith Gordon Gill Architects until early 2009. She has also worked with the Lake Forest based artists’ community Ragdale. Megan earned a MA from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a BA in Economic Development from University of California at Berkeley. Megan lives in Lake Forest with her husband and young son, who loves all the trees and animals at Ryerson Woods.
	Gillian Darlow has been on the Board of FRW since 2003. Before joining the board, Gillian was active in FRW’s Program Committee, helping to shape some of the early Sights & Sounds programs. Gillian is a principal with Civic Consulting Alliance (CCA), a nonprofit consulting firm that works in partnership with the private and public sectors to tackle some of Chicago’s toughest issues, including public education, environment, transit, and quality of life. Prior to joining CCA, Gillian was the managing director of Redmoon Theater, and worked with the environmental and conservation programs at The Field Museum. She has also worked in the arts and in international development with organizations based in California, Ohio, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. Gillian earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School Business, a Masters in Education from Stanford University, and a BA in Psychology from Harvard University. Gillian lives in Evanston with her husband and two sons, both of them budding naturalists who relish weekend hikes through Ryerson Woods.
	Judy Iacuzzi has been an executive with Iacuzzi Associates, Inc. for 20 years, a communications consultancy with branding, marketing and graphic design expertise. For the bulk of her career, Judy’s clients have been not-for-profit organizations, many of them professional associations. Early in her career she worked as development director for Openlands where she first learned about Ryerson Woods.
	Joseph Kayne joined FRW in 1999 as a Director and served as a Vice President for several years. Joe established the new nightly format for the Smith Symposium as the former Chair of that committee and is a big supporter of FRW’s programming. Joe is an equity partner at the law firm of Hardt, Stern & Kayne, P.C. in Riverwoods, Illinois where he practices business law, real estate law, and estate planning and probate law. Joe earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from Boston College, as well as a Juris Doctorate and a Masters in Law degree (LLM) from DePaul University. Joe is also licensed to practice law in Colorado. Joe is an internationally recognized large format photographer of the American Landscape. His photographs have appeared in Sierra Club and Audubon calendars, Chicago Wilderness, and the Chicago Tribune. He also has recorded stories and essays for WBEZ radio. He lives in Deerfield with his wife, Tina, and two sons.
	Julia Magnus is an associate in the Law Offices of George M. Covington LLC. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Chicago. She attended Tulane University Law School, visiting for a semester at the University of Chicago during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She received her J.D. from Tulane with a certificate of specialization in Environmental Law. In her law practice, Julia counsels donors and recipients of conservation easements, and drafts conservation easements. She leads seminars for land trusts and for the Land Trust Alliance. She joined the Board of Directors in 2008, and chairs the Youth Environmental Symposium Committee. Julia has loved visiting Ryerson Woods since she was a child. As an animal lover, she has particularly fond memories of the farm animals and watching wildlife by the river. She lives in Lake Bluff with a houseful of animals .
	C. Benjamin Ranney Principal with Terra Firma Co. in Chicago, manages the design, construction and development activities of the firm. Prior to forming Terra Firma Co., Ben held the position of Director of Development for Prairie Holdings Corporation, developer of the acclaimed Prairie Crossing conservation community in Grayslake, Illinois. Ben was accountable for the design, development, leasing and sales of the commercial components of Station Square, a transit-oriented neighborhood of shops, restaurants, offices, and condominiums adjacent to two Metra commuter rail stations. Previously, he worked for Arthur Hill & Co., where he contributed to projects such as Church Street Plaza, a $150 million mixed-use development in downtown Evanston, Illinois. Ben began his real estate career at the Shaw Company at Homan Square in North Lawndale. Ben sits on the Executive Committee of the Chicago District Council of the Urban Land Institute, and is co-chair of ULI's Urban Plan educational outreach program for high school and college students. Ben is a Board Member of the Mies van der Rohe Society at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was appointed to Chicago's Parks and Open Space Committee by Mayor Richard M. Daley, and is a member of Lambda Alpha International, the honorary society for the advancement of land economics. Ben is a graduate of Northwestern University.
	Corlene Rhoades
	Carlotta Rotman is a Mayo Clinic trained physician who practices in Chicago. She is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Knox College and graduated with honors from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She is a former president of the Lake Forest YWCA and currently is a member of the National Herb Garden Committee of the Herb Society of America. She has been involved with Ryerson Reads since its inception.
	Erica Simmons Simmons is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago. Her work explores the intersection of markets, subsistence, and political protest in Latin America and focuses on Bolivia and Mexico in particular. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., Erica worked with the nonprofit consulting firm, The Bridgespan Group in Boston. She also holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government. Erica remembers delighting in sitting by the Des Plaines River in front of the Smith Cabin as a small girl and throwing sticks into the water in an effort to see how fast they could go.
	Judith Stockdale became executive director of the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation in 1994. Her previous positions were executive director of the Great Lakes Protection Fund, senior staff associate at the Chicago Community Trust, and from 1978 – 1986 she was executive director of Openlands. Judith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geography from Durham University (U.K.) and a Master of Forest Science degree from Yale University. Judith is an independent director of the Nuveen Funds, a member of The Chicago Network, and a board member of Donors Forum. She and her husband, Jonathan Boyer, live in Chicago where Judith battles shade in an urban garden and cooks enthusiastically. Their two daughters are now grown but the family remembers many happy times together at Ryerson Woods: feeding the farm animals, birthday party nature walks, cross-country skiing, and woodland hikes in all seasons. .
Lake County Forest Preserve District Liaisons			Back to Top
	Ann Maine has served on the Friends of Ryerson Board since 2002 when she was appointed as a liaison from the Lake County Forest Preserve District Board. For the past eight years, she has had the privilege of being the chair of the Land Acquistion and Preservation Committee for the Lake County Forest Preserve District. Ann's love of the outdoors stems from her gramdmothers, one of whom was a gardener and the other a birder. Each took her in hand at the young age of three and for that she is forever grateful. Ann has a BA in biology from Williams College and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester. She is a senior lecturer at Lake Forest College, where she has been a member of the Biology Department since 1993. Ann and her husband Gordon chose their house in Lincolnshire 18 years ago because it was five minutes from Ryerson Woods. With four boys, Ann estimates that someone from her family is walking, running, cross country skiing or birding in Ryerson every week of the year!
	Susan Gravenhorst

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