Photo: Bears, Kristi Odom
Annual Meeting: 3:00 – 3:15 PM
Audubon Afternoon: 3:15 – 4:15 PM
Registration: Required and open on June 1
Location: VIRTUAL
Audubon Society of Northern Virginia will hold its annual membership meeting virtually via Zoom on Sunday, June 7 from 3:00 to 3:15 PM. The membership will vote on incoming Directors and new terms for Officers. The slate of proposed Board Members and Officers is below.
After the meeting, at 3:15 PM, we will welcome Kristi Odom for our Audubon Afternoon. Kristi’s article, “Watching over at-risk butterflies, bugs” appeared in the Washington Post on May 19. It follows Jim Waggener and his fellow citizen scientists as they document environmental changes through their 25 years of surveys. During her Audubon Afternoon presentation, Kristi will talk about her photography throughout the world and how her perspective changed after documenting the wildlife survey team.
International Wildlife Photographer Forever Changed by Local Project
Kristi Odom
Kristi Odom is an internationally acclaimed photographer, Nikon Ambassador and motivational speaker. She makes her home in the Washington DC area and travels the world shooting, teaching and sharing her insights to help our planet become a better, more loving place. With a background in sports, concerts and wedding photography, she now works solely on her biggest passion – wildlife. A photographer and filmmaker, her work focuses on connecting people emotionally to animals and celebrating those who have a connection to the natural world. Her accolades include over 60 international photography awards including several from Nature’s Best Photography. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and featured by Microsoft, Forbes, The Washington Post, Outside Magazine, Nikon and Rollingstone.com.
Election of Board Members and Officers
The following people are proposed as members of the ASNV Board of Directors:
Greg Butcher has been on the ASNV Board of Directors since 2014. Greg is the Migratory Species Coordinator for U.S. Forest Service International Programs. He is a Ph.D. ornithologist who has worked for the National Audubon Society, American Birding Association, Partners in Flight, Birders World magazine and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Greg is a recognized public speaker and interpreter for bird conservation and ecology worldwide. He welcomes the opportunity to contribute to Audubon's environmental mission at the local level.
Judy Gallagher has been an Audubon member for more than 25 years. She loves birding, but is most passionate about documenting insects and spiders and their behavior and environment through macro photography.
Judy is a Certified Master Naturalist and a charter member of the Prince William Wildflower Society. She has a Certificate in Natural History Field Studies from Audubon Naturalist Society. She joined ASNV's wonderful Natural Resources Survey when she retired five years ago and spends most of her free time roaming natural spaces in Northern Virginia looking for bugs. She also participates in several Christmas Bird Counts.
Joan Haffey couldn’t help but become a birder through osmosis and the patience of the birding community in Cape May, NJ, where she has vacationed for 30 years. Beginning with NJ Audubon, she is an ongoing and active member of three Audubon chapters. Joan is an Arlington Regional Master Naturalist whose focus is citizen science. This includes participation in regular natural resource surveys and bird counts as well as stream water quality monitoring. She helps enter historical data for some of these surveys in the eBird and PollardBase databases. Until she retired, Joan worked in global health in approximately 45 countries around the globe, including long-term assignments in West Africa, Central America and the People’s Republic of China. She is fluent in Spanish and comme ci, comme ça in French.
Betsy Martin spent her career as a researcher improving methods and measurements in the decennial census and government surveys. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. When she retired from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007, Betsy enrolled in the then-new Virginia Master Naturalist program and embarked on a second career as an environmental activist and volunteer.
She is a certified Master Naturalist, and since 2012 has served as coordinator for the Audubon at Home program in Fairfax County and as an Audubon at Home Ambassador. She also serves on the ASNV Advocacy Committee. She’s president and a founder of the Friends of Little Hunting Creek, and has led clean-ups and worked to preserve riparian habitat on the creek for 20 years. She advocated for laws to prevent litter that afflicts the creek, and organized demonstrations urging companies and associations to take responsibility for the litter their products create. She served on the Little Hunting Creek Steering Committee; a citizen group that helped the county develop its first watershed management plan. In recognition of her efforts, Betsy received a Potomac Champion Award from the Alice Ferguson Foundation, a Conservation Leadership Award from the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust and an Environmental Excellence Award from Fairfax County.
Betsy serves on Fairfax Supervisor Dan Storck’s Environmental Advisory Committee. She was a member of the Fairfax County Wetlands Board from 2007 to 2016, and is a member (and Chair) of the Fairfax County Chesapeake Bay Exception Review Committee.
Election of Officers for two-year terms FY 2021 – 2023
President: Tom Blackburn
Vice-President: Greg Butcher
Secretary: Connie Ericsonv