VP of Volunteerism

I joined PATC in 2008 and became a life member the same year. I loved the trails first and then the people who kept them. Our volunteers are what made me join, and they are still the reason I serve.

That is what led me, in 2011, to take on the hikes for the 2015 Biennial. By the time it opened, 400 volunteers had built 70 hikes and I had walked every one of them. Many of those people are still my friends. In 2024 we replaced the annual dinner with TrailFest so members could spend a weekend together instead of an evening. Nearly 100 volunteers built it, and many of them met each other for the first time that weekend. That is PATC: a club of volunteers who rarely see one another and share a mission anyway.

The centennial is why I want a second term as Vice President of Volunteerism. We are celebrating 100 Years of Volunteers, and I have spent eighteen years working beside them. I want the centennial to honor the people who built this club, and to welcome the people who will build the next hundred years. In my first term I recruited three officers, two of them younger, into leadership, none of whom had held a club office before. I have said for years that we should look toward the future while honoring our past, and that new volunteers should feel not only welcome but celebrated. That is the club a new member stays in.

A second term lets me continue chairing the centennial activities throughout 2027 and keep doing what I like best: walking up to a table of people having entirely too much fun and asking them to help.

Relevant Experience

I have been building volunteer programs for PATC since 2011. As Hikes Chair for the 2015 ATC Biennial, I led 400 volunteers who delivered 70 hikes for a weeklong conference, co-authored the guidebook with PATC cartographer Brian Goudreau, and hiked all 70 routes myself. As Supervisor of Membership (2023-2024) I ran the monthly new-member meetings, streamlined our membership categories, and oversaw the volunteer awards program before it moved to this office. In 2024 I created TrailFest, PATC's first Fest, built by nearly 100 volunteers, which replaced the annual dinner with a full membership weekend. As VP of Volunteerism I ran VolunteerFest in 2025 with Iva Gillet of the Charlottesville Chapter, rebuilt the award process so nominators now present their candidates in person and hand over the awards at the fall Fest, and am co-planning CentennialFest for this October. The recruiting is the part I am proudest of: three of the officers now serving came in because I asked them, walked them through what the job takes, and stayed available after they said yes.

Before PATC, I spent 20 years in finance and budgeting, including as a budget officer working with Congress, ten years in organization development, and five in labor relations. That is the background I bring to the centennial: I know how to build a plan, find the money, and get people who do not report to anyone to show up and do the work.