We are always seeking dedicated Board members with a passion for supporting a young nonprofit and a commitment to protecting urban farms that provide maximum benefit to their community.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Peter Casciano. Peter is the Managing Partner of the Disability Benefits department of the Law Firm of Andalman & Flynn. Andalman & Flynn is a law firm located in Downtown Silver Spring, dedicated to helping clients efficiently and effectively resolve their legal issues. He also serves as a Board Member of the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce and Co-Chair of their Young Professionals Network, where he has helped with programming, membership development and service. Growing up in Montgomery County, and working his whole life in Downtown Silver Spring he is passionate about the local community.
Dolores McDonagh. Dolores has over 35 years’ experience helping individuals change the world — one donation at a time. As a fundraising consultant to nonprofits, she has raised funds millions of dollars to support environmental, cultural, and community organizations. As VP of Membership at the National Trust for Historic Preservation she raised awareness & funds to help save places that matter – from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to Forest Glen Seminary in Silver Spring. She currently serves as Development Director for the National Park Trust. Raised in New England, Dolores headed to the DMV after receiving her B.A. in American History at Brown University. After eight years in Adams Morgan, Dolores moved to downtown Silver Spring in 1991 with husband Jamie Karn, where they found a diverse, supportive & caring community in which to raise their two sons. In her free time, she sings with a capella octet, Venus d minor and enjoys discovering new parks with Jamie, traveling, quilting, rooting for the Washington Nationals and hanging out at Kefa Café trying to get through the backlog of her New Yorker magazines. She is currently Chair of the Communications Committee for CKC Farming..
Chris Ruhlen. Chris Ruhlen is a land use attorney who focuses on land use, zoning, real estate, and related governmental issues. He assists national and local real estate developers, property owners, commercial tenants and small businesses with a full range of planning, zoning and regulatory matters in Montgomery County and other Maryland jurisdictions. Chris holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. in Anthropology from American University. Chris’s experience includes handling complex matters before the Montgomery County Planning Board, the Montgomery County Board of Appeals, the Montgomery County Office of Zoning & Administrative Hearings, the Montgomery County Sign Review Board, and the Montgomery County Council, as well as similar entities in other jurisdictions including the City of Rockville and City of Gaithersburg. Chris is also a busy father of three young daughters and an ardent music fan who can often be found jamming out on his guitar at venues around metro DC.
Kathy Stevens. Kathy has been the Executive Director for the Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy since 2012. Kathy has over 25 years of professional experience with nonprofits, education and community development, and dabbling in local politics. Her professional titles have included: fundraiser, lawyer, community organizer, and group facilitator. As a community leader, she currently chairs the Nonprofit Montgomery Board and serves on Montgomery Moving Forward, a collective impact initiative in Montgomery County. As a life-long learner, she has recently started taking piano lessons and wishes she could make time for Spanish classes. She is a graduate of Leadership Montgomery and IMPACT Silver Spring’s Community Empowerment Program. She holds her J.D. from the University of Richmond, Ed. M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and B.A. from Swarthmore College, but often thinks of going to cooking school, or at least combining her love of travel with a local culinary school experience. When she is not at her desk or at a county event, Kathy can often be found hiking with her dog, Blair, finding live music to listen too, and very often hosting dinners to bring friends and family together over a meal.
Steve Swartz. Steve Swartz recently retired after more than 21 years as a senior attorney at the Humane Society of the United States, including almost 19 of which as general counsel for its habitat protection affiliate, the Wildlife Land Trust. During that time, he completed more than 100 direct land conservation projects and addressed a host of other legal matters involving conservation easement stewardship and enforcement, nonprofit law, corporate governance, litigation, philanthropy and planned giving, mergers, and a diverse group of other real estate transactions. Steve is a frequent lecturer on land protection and nonprofit law topics to attorneys and other professionals in the land trust community. He served nine years on the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, and continues to serve on its requirements committee, and is also an alum of the Land Trust Alliance's Conservation Defense Advisory Council. Steve now serves as senior legal advisor to Wild Earth Allies, a global nonprofit that works with local nonprofits and individuals to protect the wildlife and habitats vital to global biodiversity and sustainability. Prior to his tenure at the Wildlife Land Trust and Humane Society of the United States, Steve spent nearly 20 years in private practice in Montgomery County focusing on business and real estate litigation. Steve holds a B.A. in government (with a focus on public administration and international relations) from Georgetown University and a J.D. degree from American University Washington College of Law. He is a member of the bar in Maryland and the District of Columbia, He has lived in Montgomery COunty since 1967 and now resides in Kensington with his wife, Lucy, a retired environmental consultant. Together, they enjoy spending time with their kids, kids-in-law, and granddaughters. And watching the Washington Nationals.
Anthony Sarmiento. Tony retired in 2017 after a long career in community/social justice work, including jobs in the labor movement, adult literacy, and services/advocacy for older adults. As a Filipino American, he has lived in upper Northwest DC and Silver Spring since 1958 and graduated from the DC Public Schools and American University with a B.A. in American Studies. His garlic, grown in his small backyard in Woodside, has won the blue ribbon at both the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair and the Maryland State Fair. He is often invited to speak about growing garlic, including as a scheduled presenter at the annual Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, NY. Tony was introduced to the joys of composting and shoveling horse manure by both of his parents, avid vegetable and flower gardeners, at a very young age. He first met Charlie Koiner in 1990.
JD Teitelman. JD is a home mortgage loan officer with First Savings Mortgage Corporation. Since starting his career 15 years ago, he has helped over 1000 families with financing to buy a new home. He specializes in first time home buyers looking to buy in the DMV. Originally from Connecticut, he has called the DMV home since 2003, when he first came to school at American University. Outside of work, he volunteers with Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless and Housing Unlimited. JD is passionate about travel, airline miles, hotel points, and is a diehard Washington National fan and a lover of bad Netflix TV shows.
Kate Medina. Kate is an ex-officio member of the Board. She is also Founder and the Executive Director of CKC. She discovered Koiner Farm in 2016 as a customer and eventually offered to help the Koiner's with a school visit - this was the inspiration for CKC Farming! As a former science teacher, Kate remains passionate about the hands-on, outdoor, STEM education potential that urban farms offer. Kate has a B.S. in Biology from Susquehanna University and an M.S. in Environmental Biology from American University. She previously worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and co-lead of the Green Project Reserve (a set-aside fund of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund for innovated water quality protection projects). She is an adjunct Biology professor at Montgomery College and enjoys building tree houses, taking her old dog for walks and hanging out at Koiner Farm with her husband, Ricky, and their three young kids.
Stephanie Hubbard. Stephanie is Director of Development for the Asbury Foundation at Asbury Methodist Village. Prior to joining Asbury, Stephanie was responsible for fundraising and communications for Montgomery County’s main food bank, Manna Food Center. Stephanie brings more than fifteen years of experience in the nonprofit sector, ten of those working in nonprofit fundraising, corporate partnerships and volunteer management in the greater Washington, DC area. When she’s not out engaging the community, Stephanie enjoys cooking Persian food, bird watching and spending time with her family.
Mindy Milby. Mindy lives in Takoma Park and has devoted her career to tapping into the catalytic energy that comes through connecting strong mission driven non-profits with passionate, committed volunteers. A self proclaimed people person by nature, Mindy thoroughly enjoy working with staff, volunteers and supporters to create strong, strategic plans.
Logan McCoy.
Logan is currently the Vice President of Sustainability Solutions Product Management at ISS Corporate Solutions. Prior to that he was the Senior Project Manager at Environmental Resources Management (ERM). Logan graduated from the Yale Center for Business and the Environment with an MEM and MBA from in 2017. His graduate studies focus on sustainability metrics, supply chains, and stakeholder engagement, particularly within consumer goods companies. Logan’s graduate work included coordinating the GE Colloquium in Sustainability Leadership, and facilitating two student discussion groups centering on the concepts of net-zero as well as the opportunities and challenges around integrating sustainability more holistically within business strategies. In 2015, Logan worked with New Belgium Brewing Company's Sustainability Team, performing an external stakeholder review as a part of an effort updating the company’s sustainability management system. He more recently researched innovative financing mechanisms for energy efficiency upgrades at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, TX as a part of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Fellowship. He was also selected as a recipient of the 2016 Switzer Environmental Fellowship. He has also worked with Patagonia, coordinating grant-giving, product donations, and events in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well 1% for the Planet, developing the organization’s member network in California. He is a former Board member for the Sierra Institute for Community and the Environment, a non-profit organization that promotes healthy and sustainable watersheds and forests by investing in the well-being of rural communities in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Logan holds a B.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he graduated with High Honors.
Hannah Sholder. Hannah is an ex-officio member of the Board with a background in urban planning. She is a founder of CKC Farming and serves at the Director of Farm Management. For the past 10 years Hannah has worked on local, national and international projects that support the creation of equitable, sustainable and inclusive communities. She specializes in creating conservation land trusts and community land trusts, in order to remove land from the speculative market and preserve it for affordable housing, community-driven economic development, and urban agriculture. Hannah is a Fulbright Scholar, holds a BA from Wellesley College and has Master’s degrees from UC Berkeley. In 2016, Hannah started volunteering with Charlie Koiner, and over the course of three years tried to absorb as much of his farming wisdom as possible. In 2018, she co-founded the Charles Koiner Conservancy for Urban Farming with the goals of passing on Charlie’s knowledge to the next generation and preserving his farm.