Board of Directors

Reed Blanchard

A growing sense of unease at the changes coming to Kitsap County led him to join KEC in 2020. KEC allows him to convert anxious energy into action. With a Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering (UW) and over 20 years in civil engineering design, he is eager to engage others—experienced or unexperienced— in actively working for earth justice. He is currently employed with Seattle Public Utilities.

Martha Burke

Martha has worked for the city of Seattle in planning and management, has developed environmental action agendas and has been a member and/or leader of several community groups including the Suquamish Citizen’s Advisory Committee and the League of Women Voters of Kitsap. She has a long-standing interest in the environment and its protection with a holistic perspective.

Paul Larson

Paul Larson and his wife Jayne have lived in Indianola, Kitsap County, for the past 13 years. Paul was raised in a small town in Vermont where he came to appreciate the natural world. Paul joined the Navy in 1970 after which he graduated from San Diego State University then worked in the aerospace industry in Southern California for 31 years. After retirement Paul and Jayne moved to Indianola and within a year began taking University of Washington Extension classes including Native Plants and Beach Naturalist. For the past 12 years Paul has been volunteering as a Steward at North Kitsap Heritage Park (NKHP) and as a Trustee/treasurer for the Indianola Beach Improvement Club a 501(c)(3) community club. Paul participated in creating the NKHP Forest Stewardship Plan and the NKHP Master Plan/Stewardship Plan which would preserve the NKHP as a natural open space for the future generations of human and animal residents of Kitsap County. Paul is excited to have the opportunity to join the KEC’s board of directors to help guide its efforts in protecting Kitsap County’s environments.

Bruce McCain

Bruce (retired) has a PhD in microbiology. He worked for a federal fisheries agency with his research focused largely on the effects of pollution on marine fish. Much of his team’s research was conducted in Puget Sound. He has been involved with various environmental groups in Kitsap County for the last 10 years.

David Onstad

David Onstad and his wife Dawn Dockter have lived in Kitsap County for two years in both Poulsbo and now Port Orchard. He was a professor of insect ecology and pest management for 26 years and then worked in the agrichemical and seed industry for 11 years until retirement in April 2023. He has been a treasurer of 4 non-profit organizations, including Treasurer of KEC since May. David is passionate about protecting KC Heritage Parks. This year he helped evaluate the County's COMP Plan, PROS Plan, and Critical Areas Ordinances.

Steering Committee

Marion Allen

Marion Allen is a wife, mother, and a biologist. She grew up in Oregon and lived in Leavenworth and Quilcene as well as Hagerman and Boise, Idaho. For the last 35 years, Poulsbo has been her home. A true Northwesterner, she worked as a clinical microbiologist and retired from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Her favorite travels include Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and most of all southeastern Utah. Since retirement she has been involved in our local parks as a forest steward and volunteer, Great Peninsula Conservancy (GPC) volunteer with a special love of Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park (PGFHP). She has logged hundreds of miles hiking PGFHP. In the last year, she spearheaded the launch of Kitsap County Native Plants Facebook group that now has over a thousand members. She enjoys leading hikes for them around the county. Her involvement with Kitsap Environmental Coalition (KEC) began in the spring of 2023 with inspiration from Beth Nichols.

Martha Burke

Martha has worked for the city of Seattle in planning and management, has developed environmental action agendas and has been a member and/or leader of several community groups including the Suquamish Citizen’s Advisory Committee and the League of Women Voters of Kitsap. She has a long-standing interest in the environment and its protection with a holistic perspective.

Tom Doty

Tom and his wife Aimee, a Ph.D. oceanographer at NOAA, moved to Kitsap County in 2000. With a B.S. degree in biology (cum laude) from Kent State University (1968) followed by a Ph.D. in biological sciences from the University of Rhode Island (1978), supported by the Atomic Energy Commission, he studied larval amphibian population dynamics. In a post-doc sponsored by the Bureau of Land Management, the Cetacean and Turtle Assessment Program (CeTAP), Tom flew with the U.S. Coast Guard on their Offshore Law-Enforcement Patrols looking for marine mammals and sea turtles in a 98k square mile study area in the western North Atlantic. Tom joined the faculty at Roger Williams College in 1982 and resumed his amphibian community monitoring program in Rhode Island. Following retirement Tom studied juvenile salmon habitat preference in streams tributary to Hood canal for the S’Klallam and Skokomish tribes,

Doug Hayman

Doug Hayman has been with the Kitsap Environmental Coalition since the beginning days. He has taken part in Kitsap County's Critical Areas Ordinance Update process acting as the KEC working group representative during the Fish and Wildlife session. He is active in work to hold the county in compliance with Critical Area protections. Doug likes to remove invasive English Ivy from nearby trees having done that on over 400 trees in Indianola in public lands and on the largest Great Peninsula Conservancy parcel in the area where he is a GPC steward. He has also actively worked to protect the North Kitsap Heritage Park from being degraded with a proposed paved path that would damage the environment and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Doug has worked in the field of assistive technology which has served the needs of people with disabilities since 1996.

Lisa Hurt

Lisa has been a Kitsap County resident for 58 years and has always been a lover of the outdoors, parks, and an advocate for environmental awareness. Her concerns about the use of toxic spraying in the county, the increasing population density in the area, and the diminishing wildlife corridors led her to Kitsap Environmental Coalition.

Joe Lubischer

Joe Lubischer is a twenty-year Indianola resident, fifth decade in Kitsap County, and a steward at the Indianola Waterfront & Woodland Preserve and also North Kitsap Heritage Park. For the latter park, he served several years as stewardship chair and actively promotes environmental restoration and soft trails. He is a retired engineer with experience in water resources, but mountains and woodworking are constant draws.

Bruce McCain

Bruce has a PhD in microbiology, and retired in 2005 after working for NOAA Fisheries, a Federal agency, as a program manager for 30 years. Most of his research concerned the effects of pollution on marine fish. Much of his team’s research was conducted in Puget Sound. For the last 10 years of his career, he was a facility manager at a large NOAA facility in Newport, OR. He has been involved with various environmental groups in Kitsap County for the last 10 years. Bruce currently is a member of the KEC Board and the Steering Committee seeking his second term on the Steering Committee.

Elizabeth Nichols

Beth has lived in Kitsap County, in the same house in Indianola since 1986. Beth worked as a nurse over a long career, including as a community health nurse for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. She has recently switched careers – now working as a library assistant for Kitsap Regional Library. Beth likes to use her writing skills to educate, and to challenge elected officials and agencies to do better in the realm of environmental protection. She is currently learning about the land use policies and critical areas ordinances of Kitsap County and how to work more effectively to protect this special place along the Salish Sea.

Beverly Parsons

Beverly is a 15-year resident of Kitsap County. She connects her role as director of InSites (a research nonprofit with a national and international focus on large scale systemic change) with her passion to rebalance the relationship of humans with the rest of life on this planet. She has a PhD in social science research.

Carol Price

Carol is a lifelong Washington state resident. Over that time, she has lived on both sides of the state. For the last 27 years she has called Kitsap County home. Having retired from nursing some years ago, she is taking the opportunity to explore our changing world.

April Ryan

April Ryan has lived in Kingston since 2014 after retiring from a 25-year career as a Senior Computer Specialist in Graphic Design at the University of Washington. There, she specialized in data visualization for scientific research across various disciplines, including environmental studies, using multiple media such as print publications, animation, and television. Since moving "out to the country," April has been learning about the local history and geography, beginning with a Stream Stewardship class given by WSU-extension, exploring the area's countryside, waters, and trails, and volunteering for Stillwaters and NKHP. April values the natural environment and aims to improve public awareness of and access to it through active participation in community planning. She is familiarizing herself with the area's various plans and ordinances and is currently involved in legal efforts to prevent/minimize damage to the Appletree Cove watershed.

Russell Sciandra

Russell Sciandra has lived in Indianola since 2013, when he and his wife, Eva, moved there from New York’s Hudson Valley. Russ is retired from a career in public health focused on cancer control and population-wide behavior change. He managed two large, multi-year research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health before joining the American Cancer Society in 1997 to lobby the New York State government on behalf of cancer prevention policies.

Dave Shorett

Dave Shorett has been a lawyer in Washington State since 1970, primarily as a trial lawyer handling a variety of cases in local courts, US District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He presently serves as a Judge in the Suquamish Court of Appeals. Born in Seattle, he graduated from Whitman College and law school in Boston, he has lived in Kitsap County for 43 years. He has written 5 fishing books and wrote a fishing column in the Kitsap Sun for 5 years. He has long been active in land acquisition for public use, served as Parks Commissioner for Bainbridge Island for 15 years; is a founding member of the reorganized Bainbridge Island Parks and Trails foundation; member of the Island’s Open Space Commission; long time member of the Land Trust’s Projects Committee; Board member of the Friends of the Farms; member of the Wyckoff Committee; and served on other committees.

Dave believes that what makes Kitsap County a great place to live is its natural areas, shorelines, lakes, relatively undisturbed flora and fauna. Kitsap County has the opportunity to control its growth, provide attractive urban areas with all amenities, including parks and recreation, while at the same time protecting much of its great natural lands, streams, lakes and shorelines in perpetuity.

Margaret Tufft

Margaret has taught music on three continents during her musical career. During that time, she has been exposure to the ways different cultures deal with challenges, especially concerning nature, culture, community and coming together. Currently, she is finishing her certification as a life coach. Her major interests are ecosystems and permaculture.