Blue Ridge Center Staff

Sam Brown
Samuel Brown joined the Blue Ridge Center full-time after a summer as the agricultural apprentice. He returns home to Virginia after a rather roundabout path that has included several stints in school — studying Russian, biology and Chinese Medicine — and work as an investment banker, wilderness ranger, and with various children�s programs. He believes that in farming he has finally found his passion. �Of course, I knew it all along,� he tells us, �but you have to be sure.�

Sam is thrilled to continue and broaden his study of sustainable agriculture. In addition to assisting Christine in the garden, he will be spending time in the pastures developing a grass-fed meat and egg program for the CSA members and local farmers� markets.

Casandra R. Cohn
Cassie joined the BRCES team as event producer in January 2004. Prior to her work with the Center, Ms. Cohn managed and co-produced the American Conservation Film Festival, a nonprofit committed to presenting outstanding conservation film and video. She co-founded and produced The High Street Film Festival for its first two years in 2001.

Driven by a passion for stories, Cassie got involved with film festivals after working with the Contemporary American Theater Festival for over five years, developing production and management skills. With countless art shows and music concerts under her production belt, Cassie is interested in promoting and cultivating local artistic talent. Also, she experiments with video art as well as documentary filmmaking.

Driven by a love of the land, our natural environment, and the history that comes with it, Cassie is absolutely thrilled to bring her production skills to the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship.

In 2003, she received a BA in Mass Communication with a minor in Theater, and an AA in Graphic Design from Shepherd College.

Fiona Harrison
Fiona, the Center's Naturalist/Environmental Education Coordinator, moved from California to West Virginia in July 2001. She graduated from Humboldt State University in Northern California with a B.S. in Natural Resource Interpretation. She has worked for the USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and California State Parks all over the west. She coordinates volunteer projects, environmental education programs, school groups and research endeavors. Fiona brings to this position a love of the outdoors, a passion for birds, a desire to learn and an enthusiasm for our natural world.

David Lillard
David is executive director of the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship. Previously, he was president of the American Hiking Society, a national advocacy organization for hikers and hiking groups. Before that, he worked on teams that developed a statewide rails-to-trails strategy for Illinois, a management plan for the Upper Delaware Wild and Scenic River, and a Citizens Involvement Plan for the Delaware Estuary.

David and his family are avid hikers, and feel lucky to live and hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Potomac River valley.

Tim Parsons
Tim, the center's Historical Programs Manager, moved from his home in the Deep South to the Virginia/Maryland borderlands in 2003. He graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi with a BA in Sociology and Anthropology, and as a student there participated in two archaeological field schools held at BRCES, both as a student and as a teaching assistant. He has worked on several archaeological projects in the United States and Eastern Europe, and as an undergraduate co-authored and presented a paper on petrographic ceramic analysis of an early Copper Age site in rural Hungary.

Tim conducts historic research at the Blue Ridge Center in conjunction with professors at Millsaps College and the University of Louisville, and works toward the preservation and restoration of the many historic structures on the land. He brings to the Blue Ridge Center a love and appreciation of people in the past, and a desire to tell their stories. In the past, Tim has managed several video stores part-time. He is also an avid, yet ultimately poor, guitarist, wears dirty shirts almost every day, and desperately needs a haircut.

Andrew Pressman
Andrew Pressman is a new addition to Blue Ridge Center's Mountain View Farm. Originally from Ohio, he has been involved in sustainable agriculture for the past four years.

Andrew began farming as an intern at the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary, in southeastern Ohio.He then spent a season at Bulrush Farm, working with vegetables, sheep, and cattle in Randolph, Vermont. In 2001, Andrew traveled to the Patagonia Mountains to study Permaculture.

As a certified Permaculture designer, he returned to the States to work at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, in Basalt, Colorado. Andrew is currently finishing a Masters degree in Sustainable Systems, from Slippery Rock University, while he is here. A few projects he will be working on include designing and implementing a medicinal herb garden, a forest garden, and studies in biodiesel production.

Christine Qualls
Christine has been farming for the past eleven years. She first learned to farm in 1991 at Susan and Chip Planck's Wheatland Vegetable Farm in Purcellville, Va. After two seasons at Wheatland, she apprenticed at Sleepy Creek Farm in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, then moved on to co-found and run Papa Guapo's Farm in Gaithersburg, Md., for four years. For three years, Christine managed Red Wiggler Foundation's Market Garden Program in Clarksburg, Md. She also ran her own farm, Lovey Mae, on her property in Dargan, Maryland.

Throughout these eleven years, Christine has specialized in growing heirloom and specialty vegetables for farmers markets, restaurants and CSA customers. She grows all of her produce with only natural inputs, adding nothing chemical to her fields or crops. She has sold her produce at farmer's markets, to restaurants, natural food stores, and Community Supported Agriculture members in the Washington D.C area and at the Bolivar growers' market in Jefferson County, West Virginia.

Christine is excited to be farming at the Blue Ridge Center where she can grow wonderful food for the members of the local community.

BLUE RIDGE CENTER BOARD
Bob and Dee Leggett established the Robert and Dee Leggett Foundation in 1999 to support nonprofit groups addressing regional and national resource-management and conservation issues, as well as other social issues of concern.

As part of its emphasis and commitment to environmental stewardship, the Foundation purchased 900 acres of threatened land abutting the Appalachian Trail, and launched its Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship.

Board of Directors