Nancy erber
Nancy Erber grew up in Jamaica, Queens where her father lovingly tended a small vegetable and flower garden in their mostly paved backyard.
As a college and graduate student, she studied abroad in France and Germany, earned a PHD in Romance Languages from Cornell University and completed a second MA in Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at Hunter College, CUNY. She taught in adult education programs as a volunteer and became a professor at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, teaching linguistics, French and ESL. She also served as the chapter chair of the faculty-staff union at LaGuardia and as chair of the Language and Education department.
A longtime activist and volunteer, she participated in agricultural and river restoration projects in Central America and France and later worked with those international organizations to recruit new members. In New York City she co-founded the Association of Part-Time Faculty to advocate for better benefits and working conditions for adjunct teachers and continued as an activist and elected official in the CUNY union, the Professional Staff Congress.
In East Hampton, she co-founded a community group, The Friends of Sammys Beach, that successfully advocated for the restoration of a local nature preserve and, more recently, co-founded ChangeHampton, a group focused on sustainable land use and native planting. She tends a small container garden and enjoys the woodland, native plants, grasses and Japanese-style pond on a modest lot in East Hampton's Northwest Woods, all tended and designed by the chief gardener, her spouse. Now retired, she works on freelance writing, editing, proofreading and translation projects.
Nancy Erber joined the ReWild board in December 2022.
Kathy Coley
Kathy Coley is a lifelong gardener from a long line of gardening enthusiasts and farmers. She retired in September 2020 after 40 plus years from Farmingdale State College. At Farmingdale, she advised students, coordinated media/government relations, created marketing strategies, co-chaired two presidential inauguration committees, and worked with the college president on the annual start-of-the-semester convocation.
Kathy’s involvement with environmental issues is longstanding, serving on FSC’s Sustainability Committee and organizing the annual Earth Day Fair. She was campus liaison with Transit Solutions and 511NY Rideshare, working on Car Free Day LI. A member of the Board of Directors for SUNYCUAD, SUNY’s professional development association, she co-chaired the 2013 Conference on Long Island.
Kathy continues to serves as a Director on the Board of Landmark on Main Street in Port Washington. She has lived in Port Washington since 1979, where she raises vegetables and composts as much as possible. She is the proud grandmother of August who arrived in June 2019.
Elizabeth Skolnick
Liz Skolnick is an environmental researcher, journalist and non-profit consultant who has had a lifelong love for and curiosity about the natural world. She served as project director for the Long Island Recycling Initiative, and has consulted with the NYC Parks Dept. and NYC EDC on urban greening projects. She has also worked with several community-based activism groups striving to remediate compromised ecosystems, such as the English Kills Project and Greenpoint Bioremediation Project.
Currently, she works as a PR consultant for leading renewable energy companies while also building the sustainability "think tank," Marble Blue.
Sag Harbor was Liz's first home, and she currently splits her time between her family's home on Long Island and her apartment in Brooklyn, where she is experimenting with potted plant propagation and tiny-space composting.
Liz is currently Grants Director at ReWild Long Island, and has been on the board since 2021.
Kimberly Simmen
Kimberly Simmen is a Certified Nursery Landscape Professional with 20 plus years in the business. Starting in 2000 while attending SCCC Riverhead part time in the evening to study Horticulture with a Landscape Design Emphasis (the Horticulture program was cancelled in 2005, just short of her degree). She then went on to become Assistant Manager of the Perennial Division at H.R. Talmage & Son in Riverhead, NY. It was here she learned of native plants and their importance to the ecosystem. In 2003 she began operating her own Garden Maintenance and Planter business using only hand tools (currently still doing planters). She also worked for Glover Perennials in Cutchogue, NY.
In July 2020 during the pandemic, Kimberly opened KMS Native Plants LLC in Lake Grove procuring plants native to Long Island, the Northeast and North America for her customers. She currently consults Girl Scout troops, schools, homeowners, landscapers and anyone else willing to learn about native plants and the importance of biodiversity.
Kimberly joined the board of ReWild Long Island in 2021 and serves as Director of Sustainable Horticulture.
Kimberly Simmen
(Credit: Maggie Tittler Photography.)
Beth Sutherland
A lifelong organic home gardener, in recent years Beth Sutherland has become interested in native plants and herbal medicine. She has been studying the historical and current uses of native plants and local weeds in making medicine and supporting healthy living.
In early 2020 Beth retired from a 40 year career in not-for-profit insurance companies. She has held a number of actuarial, financial, and business leadership roles in the retirement services industry.
Since retirement she has volunteered with Long Island Native Plant Initiative, the Ketcham Inn gardening team, and will participate in the 2023 Suffolk County Master Gardener program.
Beth is a 35 year resident of Long Island, first in Centerport and now in Poquott. She is gradually transforming her yard from non-native plantings into a sanctuary for native plants, herbs and wildlife.
Beth serves as Treasurer on the ReWild Board since November 2022.
Gloria Frazee
Maybe it was sitting on the front stoop as a child and observing the little red ants that sparked Gloria’s love of the outdoors… Somehow, this led to wearing Birkenstocks through mud seasons in Vermont, teaching aquatic chemistry, canoeing, and rock climbing at a science camp, and working on organic farms and vineyards. Photography, weaving, poetry and managing produce at the local coop were in the mix, too.
Obviously, the next steps to work high tech manufacturing (ick) and earn an MBA in marketing followed by a career in wine education and brand management. This included developing national training programs and an online wine school as well as interviewing winemakers on video, sharing their stories along with a blend of geography, geology, climate, agriculture, and history that comprise the terroir that shapes a wine’s character.
Gloria eventually “retired,” reclaimed her yard from the mow-and-blow crew, bought a reel-mower (a scythe is next), started watching bees and butterflies and planting natives that are slowly replacing the lawn with life.
Wanting to connect with her community in meaningful ways, she joined the East Hampton Energy & Sustainability Committee, where she is secretary, and ReWild, where she is co-chair of the Social Media & Web Committee and co-leader of the ReWild/South Fork chapter and its Summer Program for high school students. She is also the founder of ReWild/East Hampton Compost in collaboration with the Town of East Hampton. You can find her talking with folks about turning food scraps into soil food at the ReWild table at Springs Farmers Market most Saturdays.
She still wears Birkenstocks and revels in soil (and mud) and compost. It’s all a part of terroir. It’s alive.
Gloria joined the ReWild Board in 2022.
leonard green
Leonard Green is a retired English professor who has taught at private and public universities. At CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College, he served for many years as Director of Freshman English and Assistant Director of the Learning Center. While at Cornell University, in addition to his full time teaching responsibilities, he often worked with COSEP, now the Office of Academic Diversity, teaching a diverse student population in the special summer program.
Born on Long Island, Leonard comes from a family of farmers and gardeners. His grandparents left their Virginia farm for Long Island during the Great Migration. As a child, he helped plant and maintain their family gardens. He now lives in East Hampton, where he and his wife, Nancy, have converted most of their property to native woodland, mixed meadow, and native gardens.
An activist, he helped establish the Friends of Sammy’s Beach, a community group that campaigned for the full restoration of the native plant community destroyed by a misguided dredging project in East Hampton. He is also a co-founder of Change Hampton, a group dedicated to promoting native gardens and sustainable landscaping practices. Change Hampton has been instrumental in installing a native pollinator garden at East Hampton Town Hall.
Len has served on the ReWild Board since December 2022.
Raju Rajan
Raju Rajan is a technologist with a strong communitarian ethic. Since obtaining a PhD in Communication Networks at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he has enjoyed a long career as researcher and consultant. His entrepreneurial acumen has led him to found two IT start-ups as well as a number of community groups aimed at organizing people for systemic change.
Raju is one of the founders of ReWild Long Island and currently serves as Board President. He is works with Long Island Together, a progressive collective that organizes around education, immigration and social change.
An avid gardener and amateur tree-enthusiast, Raju also owns and manages Sharadavanam, a small agroforest farm in Southern India dedicated to rewilding and permaculture.
Raju resides in Port Washington, NY with wife Sonia Arora, an educator & community organizer, and son Kabeera Singh, in college.
Duong vu
Duong (“Dzuong”, pronounced “Zuon”, a.k.a. “Dee”) graduated from City College of New York with a B.A. in International Studies and an M.A. in Economics. After graduation, she found her place in a small trading company starting as an office assistant. She learned about the business, became a sourcing merchandiser and now she is a manager.
Duong was born in rural Vietnam. Her childhood memories consist of going to the field with her mother, hand-pollinating corn stalks, harvesting peanuts, soybeans, and the big Autumn rice harvest. She relocated to Dix Hills in 2019 and started her own little garden. She loves watching plants grow.
In 2020, she learned about native plants and their importance in the local ecosystem. She was captivated and determined to transform her yard into a wildlife habitat. Her yard is now a place full of life and joy, and she hopes to inspire many homeowners to do the same.
Duong has been on the Board of ReWild since November 2023.
Photographed by: David Benthal
Nancy DePas Reinertsen
Nancy DePas Reinertsen has always had a passion for gardening. It has been a part of her personal, academic, and professional life. She earned various educational degrees in Horticulture and Linguistics from SUNY Farmingdale, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. While she began a career as an interior landscaper, she later dedicated 25 years as an English teacher to immigrants at Newcomers HS and LaGuardia CC. Upon retiring, she was drawn back to her first love and became a Master Gardener.
Nancy was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, into a family of passionate gardeners who instilled in her a love of gardening, baking, and cooking. Today, she tends to her garden in the North Fork. Here, she's learned a lot by transforming useless lawn into native plant oases, planting berries for birds and her family, creating deer-resistant gardens, and growing trees, vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
Nancy and her husband, Ralph, joined Slow Food East End to meet like-minded people interested in preserving the local environment. She is active in various local programs supporting environmental stewardship and ecological justice. Despite her busy schedule, Nancy still finds time to enjoy the local beaches, swim in Peconic Bay, drink local wine, and host fabulous dinner parties.
Nancy joined the ReWild board in January 2024, co-chairing the North Fork Chapter with Ralph.
Gardens Project Manager
Samantha Jo
Samantha began her quest to find balance in our modern lives to coexist with the natural world since 2021. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Queens College, and carries an entrepreneurial spirit embedded by her immigrant parents. After working a few years in the finance industry, she leaned into her interest in health & wellness, and found a passion for sustainability in regards to regenerative agriculture, composting, and the list expands every year.
While she didn’t grow up around the garden, Samantha was eager to learn and completed her apprenticeship on an organic farm in Indiana, NYC’s Master Composter Program, and Permaculture Design Course. Samantha was inspired to teach beginners to encourage more local food production by creating urban vegetable gardens through her small business, Steady Harvest.
In her free time, Samantha loves spending time with her family, friends, and fur baby- Oliver. She enjoyed tending her garden, cooking, hiking, or simply anything that brings her loved ones closer.
Samantha joined ReWild in February 2024.
Committee Chairs
