The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology has a Board of Directors composed of five officers and up to 20 directors. Members of the Board are elected for a term of three years and may serve more than one term. The President and Vice President are limited to two one-year terms each. All Board members serve on a volunteer basis and are not compensated for their contributions to the Society.
Officers (2024-2026)
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President Lynn grew up in rural Marathon County, Wisconsin. After graduating from UW-Madison, she and husband Dave moved to Alaska. Since then, they have lived in Wisconsin, Oregon, North Carolina, Texas, South Dakota and Alaska again before moving back to Wausau in 2021. Lynn was a microbiology professor, and then went to law school and became a patent attorney, from which she retired in 2020. Before retirement, her husband was a meteorologist and a church pastor. She has loved watching birds since childhood. In addition to birding wherever she has lived, she has birded most of the United States and Canada and on all the continents. She is a self-described nutty birder, and particularly enjoys doing big years, which are the topic of two of her books, Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year (2011), and Big Years, Biggest States: Birding in Texas and Alaska (2020). She also is the author of Birds in Trouble (2016). Her books, published by Texas A&M University Press, are illustrated with her bird photographs and paintings. She has been active in many birding organizations over the years, including Wake County Audubon Society, the Carolina Bird Club, Fort Worth Audubon Society (past president) and the Texas Ornithological Society (past president), as well as other community organizations. She especially enjoys giving talks (virtually or in-person) on birds, on her birding experiences and extolling the joys of birding, and on optimizing yards for birds. Her other avocations include painting, nature-photography, church volunteer activities, playing the hammered dulcimer and handbells, and baking cookies. |
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Vice President Steve Holzman holds a BS in Zoology from Southern Illinois University and a master’s degree in wildlife biology from the University of Georgia. After completing his degree at UGA, he began a thirty-year career in the natural resources field, spending the first three years with the US Forest Service and the next 27 with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, working primarily in Oregon and Georgia. Much of his work involved using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data management to support the endangered species program and the National Wildlife Refuge System. The highlight of his career was spending 8 days on the USFWS’ Research Vessel Tiglax surveying seabirds in the Aleutian Islands, where seeing millions of auklets sailing through the air in tight formations around the islands was truly amazing. While living in Georgia, Steve became involved with the Georgia Ornithological Society (GOS), serving as Business Manager, Conservation Chair, and eventually President. He created Georgia’s first statewide birding listserv in 1998 and its first Facebook birding page ten years later. Steve loved leading field trips with his wife and birding partner, Rachel. Sharing a love of birds, and helping others get their first scope-views of new birds was one of the greatest joys of this time with GOS and continues to this day. For the last 10 years, Steve, and his wife Rachel have been spending a week each fall volunteering with the Cedar Grove Ornithological Research Station in Sheboygan County. They have so enjoyed their fall trips to Wisconsin that they decided to move to the state permanently after Steve retired in 2021. They have settled into a house on the Milwaukee River in Grafton and are thoroughly enjoying the new birds that drop into their yard and the adjacent river. Steve and Rachel look forward to exploring their new state and meeting other Wisconsin birders. |
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Secretary Carl has a lifelong passion for birds that started on his ninth birthday with the gift of a Peterson Field Guide from his Grandma Been. Now in retirement, he is extending that passion beyond personal birding to support other birders and to promote bird conservation. His work experience in project management has lent itself to many volunteer efforts, including running political action committees and serving on the boards of churches and high schools. For ten years he was the Wisconsin Christmas Bird Count editor for Audubon. During that time, he also managed the merger of the WSO and Audubon CBC programs. He has been active in other citizen science activities as well, including a wind turbine bird and bat mortality study, USGS breeding bird surveys, Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlasing and owl, nightjar, frog and toad surveys for the DNR. |
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Treasurer Melissa was introduced to birding 5 years ago. What started as a hike tagging along with a friend to find birds turned into one continuous hike looking for those birds for the last 5 years. She's been having fun exploring new areas in WI in search of new birds to add to her life list. Melissa is currently an Environmental Educator at Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Monona, WI. She first became involved with WSO after attending a hawk watch field trip at Harrington Beach in 2019. She remembers they didn’t see many hawks, but remembers how friendly and helpful everyone was. She says "It’s been a real pleasure meeting so many people at different WSO events, and now I am thankful for the opportunity and look forward to serving on the WSO board." |
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Immediate Past President Sunil grew up in a very urban but also a very bird-rich part of India and has lived in the midwestern United States for almost all of his adult life. He has early memories of mynahs, kites and peacocks from India and later became familiar with the usual feeder birds of Wisconsin. But a serious interest in birding didn't catch on until he took a break from a hectic work life when his daughter was born. The challenge of observing, studying, photographing and maybe even understanding these colorful creatures proved to have the capacity to be of lasting interest. A widely published bird photographer, Sunil has spent time birding on five continents -- ranging from the mundane to the exotic -- but calls Middleton (Dane County) home with his wife Heidi and their two children. Sunil has served on the WSO Board of Directors since 2019, as vice president 2020-2022 and as president 2022-2024. He also has written the Spring Seasonal Report for The Passenger Pigeon since 2015 and administers WSO’s websites. For a day job, he works full time at Epic, an EHR software development company, and has spent time playing various IT roles over the years. |
Board of Directors
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Rebecca Gilman Rebecca joined WSO as its administrative assistant in May of 2021. Since making the difficult decision to step down from that position in November, she has continued to volunteer for the organization. She serves on the Development, Conservation and Honey Creek Committees and maintains WSO’s Instagram and Facebook accounts. In addition, she and her husband, Charles Harmon, are WSO’s Regional Coordinators for Green and Lafayette Counties. Rebecca owes her love of birds to her grandmother and her mother. Her grandmother knew the songs of all the birds on her farm in south Alabama, and her mother kept the feeders full in their backyard in Trussville, Ala., where Rebecca grew up. When Rebecca and Charles moved to Green County from Chicago, they fell in love with their home because there were already feeders up and resident flocks of goldfinches in their yard. They joined WSO while completing a block for the second Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas. |
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Wendy Schultz |
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Dar Tiede bookstore@wsobirds.org Dar Tiede is a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, born and raised in Appleton. He graduated from Miami (of Ohio) University with a BS in Applied Science and has a master's degree from the Institute of Paper Chemistry (formerly located in Appleton). He has worked in product development and research his entire working career and is looking forward to retirement in the near future. His wife (of 42 years!) Cathy and he have spent 23 years in Wisconsin Rapids where they raised their three children. They moved back to the Appleton area in 2000. Dar took an interest in birding at an early grade school age when his father took him trout fishing. He is the coordinator for two Christmas Bird Counts (Appleton and Wisconsin Rapids), and conducts several Breeding Bird Surveys with Cathy as his assistant. His best self-found Wisconsin birds over the years have been a Clark's Nutcracker and Curlew Sandpiper. |
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Thomas R. Schultz trschultz44@gmail.com Tom has worked as an artist/illustrator for over 45 years, and has had his work published in the National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Peterson's A Field Guide to Warblers of North America, and various other publications. Tom grew up in Fond du Lac, and received his BS in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tom joined the WSO Board as Field Trips Coordinator, and has also served as Vice President and President. Tom is an active birder with a strong interest in field identification – which is an outgrowth of his bird illustration work. He has lived in the Green Lake area with his wife, Wendy, since 1983. |
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Dan Pickarts Dan grew up on a dairy farm in south central Wisconsin. As a child he and his brothers always spent their free time roaming the woods or the marsh behind the family farm where they hunted, fished, and trapped. After graduating high school, he joined the military and spent 22 years serving his country. Now he lives in Lodi with his wife, Donna, and their two sons, Gabriel and Kyle. He has always had a calling for being outdoors no matter what the weather is outside. With being outside so much he witnessed a lot of the beauty of wildlife and the outdoors and has passed this onto his sons. They, too, have come to appreciate all the things nature has to offer. He came across the Honey Creek Preserve years ago and fell in love with the property. To him, it has to be one of the most unique properties he has ever been on, from the beautiful trout stream flowing through the limestone valley to the large mature hardwood forest. There is so much diversity and with that comes a lot of unique wildlife with those areas. He loves boating with his family on Lake Wisconsin and attending his sons' sporting events. He now works for the VA hospital in Madison. When not doing any of those things you generally find him out at Honey Creek! |
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Chrissie Lindemann Chrissie has a lifelong love of nature and birds and a long-standing interest in conservation. She earned a Masters in Science degree in Environmental Education from Antioch College spending time in Vermont, New Hampshire and Ohio living at the Glen Helen Nature Center and enjoying an avian bird rescue and rehabilitation operation. In 1974 Chrissie was granted a Federal Bird Banding permit, which led her to WSO for a grant for color band to assess the movements of the American Goldfinch and as an Educational Method to turn on children to bird life. Chrissie and her stalwart lawyer husband, Gil Lindemann, thankfully shared similar interests and values. Together they raised three children while residing on a much explored ravine feeding into Lake Michigan and focus on adventuresome family travel to national parks in mutual support and their relationship with the natural world. Chrissie’s employment has included work with native plants, and leading groups at the Wehr Nature center as a Field Naturalist. She stepped back from work as her three children were born with family the focus, but returned to teach biology in the early 80’s just as computers entered our world. After running an early computer lab, she began her own computer consulting business for businesses and individual long term clients and this work continues to the present day. Chrissie’s long-standing work in conservation has included involvement with the preservation of the Donges Bay Gorge in Mequon, assistance with a conservation easement in Ozaukee County on the Milwaukee River, and together with the American Bird Conservancy, successful advocacy for bird friendly design that informed the final design of a large project in Sheboygan County. Currently Chrissie resides in Oostburg near Lake Michigan and a small swamp. In addition to a personal commitment to all things art and nature related, she has focused her energy on remodeling a small cottage by her own hand using salvage building materials where possible. She stewards her two English Setter dogs and an indoor cat named “Wren”. |
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Alicia King Alicia King has had a passion for birdwatching at an early age. He father, a biology teacher, frequently invited Alicia to join his high school students on their birdwatching field trips. She has been engaged in bird watching and bird conservation throughout her career. Alicia is the author of the book Orvis Beginners Guide to Birdwatching. She hosted the Bird Feature segment on Discover the Wild for Wyoming Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and co-hosted a season of the national BirdWatch television program for PBS. She also created and co-hosted a news segment For the Birds for Indianapolis CBS affiliate WISH TV. Alicia has served on the Operation Migration board of directors, on the council of the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Conservation Committee of the American Ornithological Society, and as the President of the Amos W. Butler Audubon Society. Alicia currently hosts the Environment for the Americas monthly Bird Book Club. She has facilitated bird conservation workshops and has been a keynote and featured speaker at many bird festivals, community events, and nature centers. Alicia joined the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin in November 2022 as the Assistant Director for Communications and Science Delivery. She served as the Alaska Region Public Affairs Specialist for Strategic Planning in Juneau, Alaska for two years after working as the Public Affairs and Partnership Staff Officer for the Chugach National Forest for five years. Alicia served as the Acting Deputy Forest Supervisor on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in 2019/2020. During her career, Alicia was the Migratory Bird Program Communication Coordinator and Urban Bird Treaty Program Manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington DC. Before joining the Federal Government, Alicia spent six years as the Director of the Bird Conservation Alliance for American Bird Conservancy and prior to that, worked as the Education and Cause Related Marketing Manager for Wild Birds Unlimited, a U.S. and Canadian bird feeding retail franchise. Alicia started her career as a naturalist at the Moccasin Lake Nature Center in Florida where she created and presented educational programs. Alicia is a Yoga Alliance Recognized yoga teacher. Alicia enjoys kayaking, yoga, hiking, birdwatching, gardening, and baking. |
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Angie Tornes Angie is a Columbus, Ohio, native and has lived in Minnesota, Germany, Puerto Rico, and Nebraska before moving to Milwaukee in 1994 to marry her husband, Mark. She gained her love of nature from her parents who frequently took the family to state parks and owned a regionally cherished nursery/landscape architecture firm. She became enchanted by birds at age 16 when her aunt gave her a copy of Robbins’ “A Guide to Field Identification: Birds of North America”. She received her BS in biology from the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University in northern Minnesota. There she studied ornithology, initiated an early spring migration class field trip to the prairie pothole region of South Dakota, and designed and installed bird deflection devices for campus buildings. In her first post-graduation job, she identified bird species and researched land use histories on newly acquired properties managed by the Minnesota DNR and The Nature Conservancy. She attended The Ohio State University, serving as a teacher’s assistant in ornithology while working toward her MS thesis on avian reproductive success, later condensed in the “Journal of Ecology and Sociobiology.” Following graduate school, she conducted research on endangered Puerto Rican Parrots in Luquillo National Forest with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Upon return to the states, she began her 35-year career in natural and recreational resource protection and collaborative planning. She served as the Central Ohio Scenic River Coordinator for the Ohio DNR for four years, helping to conserve rivers through conservation easements, community involvement, and media engagement. During her 31 years with the National Park Service (NPS) she ushered the Big and Little Darby Creeks (Ohio) into the National Wild and Scenic River System; managed the Midwest Region’s Hydropower Assistance Program, gaining recreational access and whitewater paddling instream flows at hydropower projects in multiple states; and managed NPS’s Wisconsin Office of the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, providing technical assistance to communities in transforming their goals for protecting rivers/open space and developing land/water-based trails into reality. While in Columbus she chaired the Central Ohio Sierra Club’s Fundraising Committee. In Milwaukee, she helped to establish the popular South Shore Farmers’ Market 26 years ago and has lead organizational development, sponsorship, and marketing since; serves on the Rotary Club of Milwaukee Environmental Committee; and is a member of several statewide and local conservation organizations. Angie enjoys birding, bicycling, racing (sailing), gardening, creating art, music, and international travel; she and Mark enjoy birding, hiking, exploring cultures, and camping in our vastly beautiful country. |
