Biographical Sketches of MCLUS, Inc. Board of Directors

Rachel Crandell

- Email Rachel (rwcrandell@aol.com) Back to Board

Mrs. Crandell retired June, 2001 after teaching for 20 years at Principia Lower School in St Louis and 9 years running a nursery school on her family’s farm in Indiana. Rachel has taught numerous seminars for teachers and given hundreds of slide shows around the nation about tropical rain forests. She and her husband Dwight have 3 grown children and 3 grandchildren. On the Indiana farm they grew all their own food organically including goats, chickens, pigs, and horses (though they didn’t eat the horses). Rachel has volunteered with Girl Scouts, 4-H, elected to school board and is active in the Christian Science church. She worked for the Smithsonian Institution and the Nation’s Capitol Girl Scout Council as a Field Director the first year after receiving a BA from Principia College in English and Art History. Later, she received a Master of Arts in Teaching from Webster U in St Louis. She has been an environmentalist forever and has been President of the St Louis Rain Forest Advocates, leads trips to the tropics (have been 25 times since 1989) hoping to give folks a peek at conservation and the impact our lives at home have on distant endangered places — hoping to change habits and thinking.

Dwight Crandell in memoriam

Dwight Crandell retired on June 30, 2001 after serving 15 years as Executive Vice President of the St. Louis Science Center and 5 years as Assistant Director and Executive Director of the Museum of Science and Natural History in St. Louis. He also spent 9 years on the staff of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, 1½ years at Mount Vernon (George Washington’s Home in Virginia) and 5 years in the United States Air Force. He is a member of Rotary International, American Association of Museums and AAM/ICOM, an Associate of the Monteverde Conservation League and holds degrees of Bachelor of Arts (History and Education), Principia College and of Master of Arts (History Museum Studies), Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University College at Oneonta, NY. With his wife Rachel he has enjoyed traveling in Central and South America since 1990 and supporting educational/conservation activities in Belize, Ecuador, Bolivia and Costa Rica as well as numerous conservation and cultural organizations within the United States. Dwight passed away on Feb 16, 2008.

Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy

- Email Dr. Lovejoy (lovejoy@HeinzCtr.org) Back to Board

Thomas E. Lovejoy is President of the Heinz Center and currently the Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for the Environment for the Latin American region for the World Bank. He is also the Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation and is a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. In the past, Tom worked as the Assistant Secretary for Environmental and External Affairs for the Smithsonian Institution, and as Executive Vice President of World Wildlife Fund-US. Tom conceived the idea for the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project, originated the concept of debt-for-nature swaps, and is the founder of the public television series Nature. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. (biology) from Yale University. Tom is past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, past chairman of the United States Man and Biosphere Program, and past president of the Society for Conservation Biology. In 1998, Brazil awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of Scientific Merit. In April 2001 he received the John & Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. He serves on numerous scientific and conservation boards and advisory groups including: the New York Botanical Garden, Committee for the National Institute for the Environment, Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, Wildlife Preservation Trust, Resources for the Future, Woods Hole Research Center, and the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies.

Dra. Julia Matamoras

- Email Dr. Matamoras (julmat@ice.co.cr) Back to Board

Dra. Julia Matamoras was born in Costa Rica in 1952, but moved to NYC (Staten Island) in 1958 where she went to Catholic grammar and high school. In 1970 Julia began studying Medicine at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. In 1975 she transferred to the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico where she received her degree in 1979.That year Julia went back to live in Costa Rica and started her internship. She has worked as a General Practitioner since then and has worked in the San Carlos area in northern Costa Rica since 1986. Dra. Matamoras spent 10 years working in the ER. Currently, part of her work is with terminally ill patients in a Pain Clinic and Palliative Care center (since 1997). She is also involved in a committee that deals with the prevention and treatment of Domestic Violence in her region since 1993. Dra. Matamoras first came into contact with the Monteverde Conservation League (MCL) in 1993 and in 1994 became a member and was asked to participate on the board of directors .She has participated in different posts since then, and, is the immediate past president of MCL’s board of directors. Julia is married and has a daughter and a son.

Tom Newmark

- Email Tom Newmark (tnewmark@newchapter.com). Back to Board

Tom Newmark is president and co-CEO of New Chapter, Inc., a certified organic provider of leading multivitamins and herbal formulations. He is co-owner of Luna Nueva Extractos de Costa Rica that operates a model biodynamic and certified organic ginger and turmeric farm in the volcanic rainforest at the edge of the Children’s Eternal Rainforest. Tom is co-founder of Semillas Sagradas, a sanctuary for endangered medicinal herbs of the neo-tropics. He is on the board of Scientific Advisors for the organic Center for Education, on the board of Biodynamic Trade Association, a member of Organic Trade Association, the American Herbal Products Association, the American Botanical Council, the NNFA, the Society of Integrative oncology and the Bar Association of Missouri. Tom received his BA and his JD from Washington University and had twenty years experience as a trial lawyer. Tom has several patents and has authored numerous articles. His books include Beyond Aspirin and The Life Bridge.

Tom is currently collaborating with scientists at Columbia University on the first herbal clinical trial for the prevention of prostate cancer using proprietary formulation Zyflamend.

Jane Oliver

- Email janeoliver@condoninc.com

President of Condominium Property Management a company which has provided management and consulting services to condominium and homeowner communities for over 20 years. Served as trustee on the Robinwood West Community Improvement District for 4 years. An avid gardner. Committed to work done by MCLUS. Worked in accounting at Chromalloy, Love Real Estate, Equitable Real Estate and the accounting firm of Rubin Brown Gornstein.

Dr. Peter H. Raven

- Email Dr. Raven (PRaven@nas.edu) Back to Board

Peter H. Raven has served as Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, and George Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University in St. Louis, since 1971. He has visited Costa Rica since 1966, and has served as a member of the Board and also President of the Organization for Tropical Studies. The Garden supports the work of Bill Haber at Monteverde and is currently producing the Manual Flora de Costa Rica, an account of all the plants of the country, in cooperation with INBio and the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. The Garden’s staff of some 45 Ph.D. level scientists is conducting research throughout the tropics of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Dr. Raven is currently chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, chair of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, and a member of the board of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science. A native of California and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (A.B. 1957) and U.C.L.A. (Ph.D. 1960), Dr. Raven was a member of the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University for nine years before coming to St. Louis. He is a member or foreign member of some two dozen academies of science around the world and served as Home Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for 12 years.

Terry Sheets

- Email Terry Sheets (dtsheets@sbcglobal.net) Back to Board

Terry Sheets is from Newport Beach, California, and has participated in the Rotary International student program where she lived in England for two weeks and has hosted students from France, Korea and England. She traveled to Europe on an Art History abroad while in college. She received a B.A. double major in Art and Art History from Principia College in 1985. A girl scout herself, she has acted as den leader for her son Dylan’s cub scout den for two years. Since moving to Missouri in 1987, she has been practicing Interior Design. After working as a principle designer, she has been operating her own business for 5 and a half years. Her two children attend Principia where her husband Dan is employed as a coach and P.E. teacher. Her support for Principia includes serving as Pre-School Chairman for the Mother’s and Dad’s Club, and she has enjoyed teaching Sunday School for many years.

Recently, she traveled with her son Dylan -the 2006 Student Ambassador to the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest in Costa Rica with Rachel Crandell. She has begun to research the companies she purchases furniture from to learn that some manage their own forests and practice replanting to preserve their supply. Upon returning from the rain forest, she and Dylan have assembled a 20 minute slide show presentation about their trip. They have spoken to three schools: Hinchcliffe Elementary in Illinois, The Principia and South Middle School in St. Charles. Materials they share with their students are their journals, two photo albums, rain forest books, stuffed animals, and educational wildlife cards they collected. Since returning they have raised additional money by hosting a garage sale, selling lemonade and cookies, rain forest bracelets, and hand made cards. They look forward to speaking to more schools this year.

Gay Townsend

- Email Gay Townsend (gaytownsend@yahoo.com) Back to Board.

Gay Townsend’s love of the out-of-doors stems from her early years roaming the fields, woodlands, marshes and beach of a waterfront farm near Maryland’s eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Accompanying her husband through teacher/naturalist training at Ohio’s Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center years later and working on staff there ignited the more serious interest in nature that lies at the heart of her life today. Along the way her work has included teacher’s aide, houseparent, and various staff positions at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio, Virginia’s Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Horizon’s Edge Country Home School and St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and The Principia in St. Louis. Before nature again took center stage in her life Gay was an enthusiastic champion of the arts, serving on the Community Concert Association board and the board of incorporators for the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. More recently she has trained her focus on the fulltime return to school for an environmental studies degree and related volunteer work and travel in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and Ecuador. Her commitment to education, love of the Monteverde forests, and the inspiration to carry forward some of her late husband’s work support the imperative she feels to participate in the conservation and protection of tropical ecosystems in particular and social change that will contribute to a sustainable future for all species. She has two grown sons who share a healthy dose of her enthusiasm for this vital work.