Elizabeth Armstrong
Director
Liz is a member of the Maine Bar and for many years specialized in environmental law. For the past decade or more, she has worked in the field of gift planning at two of Maine’s institutions of higher education—first at Colby College and now as Senior Associate Director of Gift Planning at Bowdoin College. In this role, Liz educates donors and friends about gift vehicles such as charitable gift annuities, trusts, and bequests. Earlier in her career, she was SVP/GC at an environmental liability acquisition firm after having served as Corporate Environmental Risk Manager at one of the nation’s largest financial institutions. Liz also was Deputy Commissioner at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in the McKernan administration. A multi-generational native of Maine, Liz grew up in Brunswick but has now lived in Topsham with her husband for almost 4 decades where they raised their two children.
John Berry
Treasurer, Board of Directors
John grew up in Maine and is an avid birder. He’s led birding walks for BTLT and other organizations and travels widely in search of new birds!
He has been involved in many civic organizations, including Maine Audubon, and has spent a large part of his professional life in Maine. He has degrees in Industrial Management from MIT and an MBA from Northeastern, is a licensed CPA, and has held CFO-level positions in a few Maine corporations, including Sebago, Stinson, and Oakhurst.
He continues to provide CFO services to medium sized Maine firms on a part-time basis, including being CFO for 2 startups and a Maine manufacturer distributing nationally through the grocery channel.
Joan Carney
Director
Joan grew up on a family farm in Pennsylvania, where she developed a deep connection to the natural rhythms of the seasons. Eager for new experiences, she moved to the city, pursuing higher education and a 30-year career in the apparel industry. She worked with major retailers, traveled the world for trend and production, and collaborated with global suppliers.
After a corporate merger, Joan embraced a slower pace of life, reconnecting with local economies, as a coach and business consultant, supporting farmers, nonprofits and small businesses. She created resources and tools to help others live more intentionally. In 2010, with a sense of coming home, she started a life in Maine. Joan continues to guide small businesses and nonprofits in community building and storytelling.
Joan first engaged with BTLT through their Farmers Market at Crystal Spring Farm and the Tom Settlemire Community Garden. In 2021, she joined the communications team and currently chairs that committee. She enjoys gardening, cooking, and traveling.
Bill Ferdinand
Vice President, Board of Directors
Bill Ferdinand has resided in Brunswick with his family since 1994. He served on the Brunswick Conservation Commission for many years and has been involved with open space planning, comprehensive planning, and land conservation for the Town. Bill is an attorney with Eaton Peabody, where he represents a variety of clients on public policy issues in the Maine Legislature and in regulatory matters with state agencies and municipalities. Prior to Eaton Peabody, he was a Senior Planner with the Maine State Planning Office where he worked on environmental policy issues and economic development initiatives. Bill was educated at St. Lawrence University, Tulane Law School, and Vermont Law School. Bill likes to spend time with his family and friends exploring the oceans, mountains, lakes, rivers, and forests of Maine and beyond.
Rol Fessenden
President, Board of Directors
Rol worked at LL Bean for 30 years, and in the last 15 years created and ran their world-wide supply chain. He was responsible for extending LL Bean’s partnership ethic to suppliers all over the world, ensuring that quality standards were met, and enforcing Bean’s human rights standards. Bean was a founding member of President Clinton’s factory human rights initiative in the 1990s.
Rol has volunteered for various organizations, including Brunswick Town Planning, Maine Department of Education, the National Alliance for State Math and Science Coalitions, Mid Coast Hospital, Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and others.
Rol loves to be outdoors, whether it is daily walks with his wife Averil or mountain climbing and backpacking with friends. The outdoors is where he goes to find healing.
Bob Frank
Director
Robert “Bob” Frank first came to Brunswick in 1960 as a Bowdoin College student and quickly developed a lasting connection to the community. After Bowdoin, he earned his law degree from Harvard and built a distinguished career as a trial lawyer with Choate Hall & Stewart in Boston, where he handled complex commercial and intellectual property cases and served for 14 years as the firm’s Managing Partner.
Bob has long been dedicated to public service, holding leadership roles in Winchester, Massachusetts, including Chair of the School Committee, Chair of the Finance Committee, and 25 years as an elected Town Meeting member. Now semi-retired, he divides his time between Harpswell and Boston and remains committed to community engagement and thoughtful stewardship.
Jenny Hanson
Director
Jenny was born in Brunswick but grew up in the South, spending much of her life ‘away.’ Still, Maine always tugged her back through vacations, college, and visiting friends. She and her partner returned as full-time residents in 2023.
Jenny has spent her career in education from teaching to policy work to educational technology product development in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. She is motivated by the mission that all kids deserve access and opportunity regardless of the zip code they are in. Jenny joined the Land Trust eager to contribute to a mission driven organization in her community that is focused on preserving and appreciating the place she has spent her life exploring. Outside of work, she can be found hiking, running, or swimming in the open water.
Richard (Mers) Mersereau
Director
Mers worked for 44 years at Bowdoin College in various administrative capacities, including admissions, communications. president’s office and board of trustees operations, and development, before retiring in 2015 as Secretary of the College Emeritus.
A long-time board member of BTLT, he also serves on the board for The Ecology School (Saco, ME) and Broadway Housing Communities (West Harlem, NYC), and is a former board member of Curtis Memorial Library.
Mers is a Bowdoin graduate, with a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Wesleyan University. He lived in Harpswell for 25 years and has been a Brunswick resident since 1997. He is the father of Kyle and Elena.
Keisha Payson
Director
Keisha is the Director of Sustainability at Bowdoin College, an office she has managed since 2001. In this role Keisha focuses on both engaging faculty, staff, and students in Bowdoin’s sustainability efforts as well as ensuring that Bowdoin integrates sustainable practices and policies in operations across campus. Current efforts focus on plans to become a fossil fuel-free campus by 2042. Keisha’s early career work focused on environmental education, working as an educator for both the Chewonki Foundation and Maine Audubon. Keisha received a bachelor’s degree in Geography and Environmental Studies as well as a master’s degree in Community Planning and Development from the University of Southern Maine. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Environmental Leadership Program. Keisha enjoys spending her free time gardening, running, hiking, boating and spending time with her husband, two teenagers and their dog.
Susan Rae-Reeves
Secretary, Board of Directors
Susan has a background in fundraising for community-based and mental health organizations in NYC, and social work in NYC and Maine. After years of experiencing the wealth of diverse communities in the city, she returned home to Maine, choosing Topsham for its amazing rivers, trails, and proximity to everything important, including Auburn/Lewiston where she was born and grew up. In retirement, Susan devotes herself to service on town committees and not for profit boards, including CREA/BTLT. A love of the outdoors, and the potential for bringing together people of all ages, is her motivation.
Peter Simmons
Director
Peter Simmons is a longtime arts administrator and nonprofit leader with more than three decades of experience in Maine’s cultural sector. A Bowdoin graduate, his career includes founding a museum services business, serving as Assistant Director of the Maine Arts Commission, and leading the Bowdoin International Music Festival as Executive Director from 2000 to 2016.
Since retiring, Peter has remained active in nonprofit governance and community initiatives, with particular interest in environmental stewardship and civic engagement. A Brunswick resident since the 1970s, he has long enjoyed the lands now cared for by the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust and pursues lifelong interests in gardening, craftwork, and amateur natural history.
Janvier Smith
Director
Jan earned a B.S. in biology from Duke University and an M.A. from the Naval Postgraduate School. A former summer field ecology researcher and seasonal National Park Service ranger-naturalist, he served 22 years in naval aviation, then owned an insurance and financial services agency for 13 years and serves as a volunteer financial counselor for military retirees and other veterans. Jan has served as CREA’s treasurer, finance committee member, member of the development and programs committees, and is a past president of CREA.
Sandy Stott
Director
Wherever he is, Sandy hopes for a daily trail. At home in Brunswick, that often takes him out to public lands.
Beginning in 1986, he wrote for or edited (1989 – 1999) the Appalachian Mountain Club’s journal, Appalachia. At the same time, he became a teacher, drawn centrally to the work of Henry David Thoreau and to the sentence-by-sentence teaching of writing. The 17-year-olds he taught were ideally suited for the explorations both subjects asked.
Other Life Facts: English teacher, coach and dean at Concord Academy, Concord MA (31 years); AMC member; author of Critical Hours — Search and Rescue in the White Mountains (UPNE, 2018); once upon a time, a tennis pro. Current: writer, trail-ambler, sea-kayaker, on Brunswick Conservation Commission. Married to teacher and writer, Lucille Stott.
Emily Swan
Director
Emily is business manager of Pine Island Camp, a boys’ camp that has been in operation since 1902. She served on the BTLT board in the early 1990s, when she was involved in the capital campaign for Crystal Spring Farm, and rejoined the board in 2011. She served on Brunswick’s first Comprehensive Plan Committee and Downtown Master Plan Committee, for many years served on Brunswick’s Village Review Board, and currently volunteers with Curtis Friends. She is an avid bird watcher, forager, and traveler. She and her husband Ben have lived in Brunswick since 1987 and are glad their three grown children all live close by in Portland.
Dana Totman
Director
Dana, a Maine native from a Topsham dairy farm, is a passionate hiker, completing the Appalachian Trail, half the Pacific Crest Trail, John Muir Trail, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Cotopaxi, Mt. Blanc Circuit, and the 67 New England 4000 footers. He also shares his love of the outdoors with his wife, Donna, and their two adult sons.
Inducted into the Maine Business Hall of Fame, Dana has served on many local and state boards, and dedicated his career to helping others. He served as Executive Director of Coastal Economic Development Corporation, Deputy Director of Maine State Housing Authority, and led Avesta Housing as CEO for 22 years. Dana holds a BA from the University of Maine and an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University, with additional executive training.
He now advises nonprofits, government agencies, and others, specializing in board and policy development, affordable housing, and homelessness.
Lloyd Van Lunen
Director
Lloyd retired from his internal medicine practice in Maine in 2013. He practiced with the Bowdoin Medical Group, which he helped to found in 1994. He formerly served on the board of Midcoast Health Services for many years and was a past president of the medical staff of the hospital. He has been on the BTLT Board since 1995 and was president of BTLT from 2002-2008. He lives in Brunswick and is an avid sailor, hiker, cross-country skier, and music lover. In the past few years he has completed voyages to Newfoundland and Labrador as well as numerous cruises along the Maine coast.
Rick Wells
Director
Rick and his wife moved to Brunswick from Washington, DC, in 2011, drawn by the area’s natural beauty and strong community. He enjoys gardening, amateur woodworking, cooking, and is a passionate advocate for environmental conservation. He has been a valued member of the BTLT Development Committee for three years and extends his commitment to protecting the natural world by serving on the BTLT board.
Rick is currently the Director of Planned Giving at Ocean Conservancy, working to support the organization’s efforts to protect marine ecosystems. He has also served as Director of Gift Planning at Colby College and spent 14 years in various gift planning roles at The Nature Conservancy. He recently served on the board of Curtis Memorial Library and is currently on the board of the Maine Planned Giving Council.
Nick Whatley
Director
Nick grew up in Texas and attended Middlebury College for three years before leaving to grow organic vegetables with his wife, Laura.
After his uncle sold the farm, Nick and Laura moved to Topsham where they raised their two awesome sons, Ben and Dan.
In 1986 Nick founded Morningstar Stone and Tile, now 100% employee owned. In 2012 Ben, Nick and Laura established Whatley Farm, a certified organic vegetable farm, where Nick can indulge in his passions: care of the land, fostering the soil food web, playing bass fiddle in his band, and playing with his two grandchildren.
Margaret Wilson
Director
Margaret has lived in Brunswick since 1996, moving here from Madison, Wisconsin where she first started working on land conservation with the Ice Age Trail. She served as a Board member, an active volunteer, and used her skills as an attorney to help acquire land for the trail corridor. She practiced land use law for three years after moving to Maine and has served on several local municipal and non-profit boards including the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Brunswick Planning Board, the Brunswick Comprehensive Plan Review Committee, Zoning Rewrite Committee, and United Way of Mid Coast Maine. At BTLT, Margaret has served as the Lands Committee Chair since 2010, assisting with projects from their initial phone call to closing, leading site walks, and actively participating in property monitoring, trail creation and maintenance as part of BTLT’s group of stewardship volunteers.
Advisory Council
Alicia Heyburn
Angela Twitchell
Ann Gardner
Averil Fessenden
Barbara Murphy
Becky Shepherd
Ben Israel
Brad Babson
Brooks Stoddard
Carla Rensenbrink
Chip Spies
Dan Meyer
Dan Morgenstern
Dana Cary
David Vail
Eileen Johnson
Elizabeth Hertz
Forrest Dillon
Heather Higbee
Henry Heyburn
Jaki Ellis
Jan Pierson
Jane Crichton
Jeff Nelson
Jim Howard
John Wasileski
Julie Isbill
Jym St. Pierre
Kathy Thorson
Lisa Martin
Liz Pierson
Martin Wilk
Matt Klingle
Millie Stewart
Nate Wildes
Nelia Dunbar
Steve Pelletier
Susan Stoddard
Tim Glidden
Tom Settlemire
William Mason
