Stewardship Council

The stewardship council oversees ATC policy development and programs related to stewardship of the Appalachian Trail and surrounding lands. The council advises the ATC’s conservation program on overall strategic direction and recommends policy to the board of directors for consideration. The council serves as the interface among the regional partnership committees, Trail clubs, the ATC staff, agency partners, and the board of directors.

Beth Critton, of West Hartford, Connecticut, joined the Board of ATC and became stewardship council chair in July 2013. A life member of ATC, she has served on the council since 2011, chairing the council’s community outreach committee from 2011–2013. Beth is past chair of the Appalachian Mountain Club–Connecticut Chapter, which maintains the A.T. in Connecticut. As chair, she revived the chapter’s annual “A.T. Day” tradition and promoted its yearly “Give a Day to the A.T.” volunteer event. She is a charter and current member of the Appalachian Trail Museum Society. Beth is a land-use and environmental attorney at Shipman & Goodwin, LLP in Hartford, Connecticut. The mother of an A.T. thru-hiker (and three other children), Beth has day- and section-hiked more than 1,800 miles of the A.T. since 2004.

Tom Banks, a native of Holden, Massachusetts, has worked for more than 30 summers as a U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service ranger throughout the United States, specializing in interpretation, law enforcement, search and rescue, wilderness, and campsite and trail maintenance. Tom chairs the council's trail and camping committee and has spearheaded ATC's Leave No Trace initiative. He is a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, first joining in 1975. Tom holds BS and MS degrees in outdoor recreation and environmental science from Colorado State University and Western Washington University. He enjoys rock climbing, kayaking, photography, impersonating John Muir in living history performances, and backpacking several hundred miles a year on the Appalachian Trail.

Cosmo Catalano, of Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been a member of ATC since 1998. He previously chaired the Massachusetts Appalachian Trail Management Committee of the Appalachian Mountain Club–Berkshire Chapter and has served as corridor boundary coordinator. He is currently the committee’s volunteer coordinator, as well as a Trail maintainer and a corridor monitor. Cosmo maintains and contributes to the committee’s blog, “Fun in the Woods” <massatprojects.blogspot.com>, and has written articles for A.T. Journeys and the Appalachian Trailway News. Cosmo holds an MFA in technical design and production from the Yale School of Drama and is currently the production manager for the Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College. He is a current member and past chair of the New England regional partnership committee and is the committee’s representative to the stewardship council.

Delia Clark, of Taftsville, Vermont, is a trainer, speaker, and facilitator for place-based learning, civic engagement, and heritage interpretation. Currently principal of Confluence Associates, she cofounded the Antioch New England Institute of Antioch University and cofounded Vital Communities. Delia is on the faculty of a Trail to Every Classroom (TTEC), as well as that of the Iditarod Trail to Every Classroom (iTREC!) and Park for Every Classroom (PEC). Delia is coauthor of a number of publications on place-based learning and civic engagement, including Questing, A Guide to Creating Community Treasure Hunts. Delia is fascinated by long-distance trails and hikes with her husband Tim Traver whenever she gets the chance. A member of the Green Mountain Club, Delia also has served on the board of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and currently volunteers on the TTEC Advisory Council.

G. Robert Lee, of Warrenton, Virginia, is an ATC life member and has served on the ATC board of directors. He is involved in numerous Appalachian Trail activities, including serving on the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) council and as president of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter. He is a life member of PATC and has been an ATC member for 25 years. While serving as Clarke County, Virginia, administrator, Bob was primary author of a Memorandum of Understanding and Agreement among the National Park Service, ATC, and Clarke County for monitoring existing and proposed land uses adjacent to the Appalachian Trail in the county. Bob has served as a shelter overseer, trail maintainer, and corridor monitor over several decades, and he has hiked extensive sections of the A.T. in the Mid-Atlantic states. He is the retired executive director of Virginia Outdoors Foundation, an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which holds more conservation easements than any public land trust in the nation.

Judith McGuire, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, is an active outdoorswoman who maintains a two-mile section of the A.T. in Shenandoah National Park as a member and volunteer of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. She is also a member of the Green Mountain Club. A retired international development expert, Judy is a regular volunteer in the ATC information center and is active in community organizing around climate change issues. She is a regular contributor to A.T. Journeys, in addition to being a freelance writer.

Roger Moore, of Raleigh, North Carolina, is an associate professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at North Carolina State University, where he teaches and conducts research on outdoor recreation behavior and management and the human dimensions of natural resource management. He previously served on the ATC board of directors from 2005–2008, the stewardship council from 2005–2007, and as coordinator of the A.T. MEGA-Transect program during a year-long sabbatical in 2008 and 2009. He has been an ATC member since his 1973 thru-hike.

Tom Mullin, of Unity, Maine, is a long-time faculty member at Unity College. He is currently an associate professor of parks and forest resources, as well as the program coordinator for that major. Tom has been interested and engaged in Appalachian Trail matters most of his life, beginning as a teenager with an Explorer Post and in Maine for the past 15 years. He and his wife became ATC life members after thru-hiking the Trail in 1987. Tom was recognized recently as one of the top three faculty members in Maine for community-based and service learning, recognizing the work his classes have done with local land trusts and organizations on land-use planning to enhance effective communication strategies. He is a long-time board member and fellow of the National Association for Interpretation.

G. Gail Neffinger, of Nyack-on-Hudson, New York, has been a member of ATC since 1987. In 1995, he was appointed as chair of the Orange/Rockland A.T. Management Committee of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (NY-NJTC), a position he still holds. Prior to that appointment, he served as the AMC-New York/New Jersey Chapter's West of Hudson trails supervisor. From 1990 to 2001, Gail was a member of the NY-NJTC's Board of Directors, during which time he served for four years as chair of the conference's trails council. His initiation to the A.T. was on a three-night novice backpack in Shenandoah National Park as a high school sophomore. Despite the blisters and Dinty Moore stew, he has never abandoned the quest. Gail received his PhD in psychology from Columbia University and his MBA from Rutgers, and practices as academician, clinician, and management consultant. He is the Mid-Atlantic regional partnership committee’s representative to the stewardship council.

Tom Ottinger, of Ellijay, Georgia, is a board member of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club (GATC), where he also chairs the Konnarock committee and serves as the director of community outreach. He coordinates GATC’s involvement with ATC’s Trails to Every Classroom and the Appalachian Trail Community program. Tom is a certified chain- and crosscut sawyer and an A.T. section maintainer who also has volunteered on the Konnarock and S.W.E.A.T. Trail crews. He is an A.T. section-hiker, having completed about 500 miles of the A.T. so far. Tom is the executive director of the Georgia council for teachers of mathematics and has won numerous awards for excellence in teaching math.

Don Owen, of Round Hill, Virginia, is an Appalachian Trail maintainer and corridor monitor with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, roles he has had since 1988. He became the executive director of the Land Trust of Virginia in June 2008, following his retirement from the National Park Service. During his NPS career, Don worked as a realty specialist for the Appalachian Trail land-acquisition program, spent eight years on special assignment to ATC as resource management coordinator, and served as environmental protection specialist with the NPS-Appalachian Trail Park Office for twelve years before retiring.

Trudy Phillips, of Lynchburg, Virginia, chairs the Virginia regional partnership committee, where she is also the alternate representative for the Natural Bridge Appalachian Trail Club (NBATC). She served as RPC secretary prior to becoming chair. She is the Virginia regional partnership committee representative on the stewardship council. A member of NBATC since 1994, Trudy has served as president, vice president, mega-transect coordinator, and water monitoring coordinator and continues to be an A.T. maintainer and hike leader. She completed an A.T. thru-hike in 2008–2009. Trudy holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Carnegie–Mellon University and the University of Wyoming. She worked on wastewater treatment and environmental cleanup for synfuels and nuclear facilities.

Fred Tutman, of South Marlboro, Maryland, is a grassroots community advocate for clean water in Maryland’s longest and deepest intrastate waterway and is known as the Patuxent Riverkeeper. He lives and works on an active farm that has been his family’s ancestral home for nearly a century. Before founding the Patuxent Riverkeeper organization, he spent nearly 30 years working as a media producer and consultant on assignments all over the globe, including a long stint working with and advising traditional healers in West Africa. After a late-life sojourn into law school, Fred now teaches an adjunct course in environmental law and policy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He does trail maintenance on the Appalachian Trail for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club when not exploring the Patuxent River by kayak. He was honored by Washingtonian magazine as an Eco-Hero in 2009 and is a recipient of the Bernie Fowler Sneaker Award (State of Maryland), the Mike Maloney Award (Sierra Club) and the Jug Bay Award (Friends of Jug Bay). He is among the longest serving Waterkeepers in the Chesapeake region and the only African-American Waterkeeper in the nation.

Bill Van Horn, of Franklin North Carolina, served 29 years with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, retiring with the rank of Colonel in 2002. Former president of the Nantahala Hiking Club, he also has volunteered on the ATC Konnarock Crew, on AHS volunteer vacations, and as an A.T. ridgerunner in the Smokies. Now a full-time volunteer with hiking and environmental organizations, Bill is a life member of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the American Hiking Society (AHS), is an AHS Ambassador and a Leave No Trace Trainer, and will serve as chair of the Southern regional partnership committee. Since 2009, he and his wife Sharon have section-hiked more than 1,900 miles of the Trail.

Rebekah Young, of Knoxville, Tennessee, has been a member of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club since 2009 and will serve as club president in 2014. She is an active hike leader and hike participant, and is new to the world and work of the ATC and its myriad partners. She attended ATC's volunteer leadership training in August 2012, and her first biennial conference was the 2013 Cullowhee, North Carolina, conference. Rebekah has been employed for the past 13 years as an environmental and compliance attorney for B&W Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.