Trustees

Jan Barry is a freelance writer, poet and author whose books include A Citizen’s Guide to Grassroots Campaigns (Rutgers University Press). A member of the Sierra Club and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, he teaches World Sustainability at Ramapo College of New Jersey. As a staff writer at The Record of Bergen County, he covered the creation of the NJ Highlands Regional Master Plan and related environmental issues in the region. He lives in Teaneck, NJ.

Sandy Batty is the former Executive Director of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), where she worked for 29 years in various capacities before retiring in 2014. She is currently Chair of the Mountain Lakes Shade Tree Commission, and is a former Chair of the Planning Board, member of the Environmental Commission, and Borough Council member. She previously served as President of the Board of the Highlands Coalition from 2009 to 2012 and from 2016 to 2020. Sandy lives in Mountain Lakes.

Dwight Hiscano is a photographer who has dedicated a good part of his decades-long career to capturing our state’s landscapes on film and digital sensor. With particular emphasis on the rugged landscapes of the Highlands, where his family has owned land for over a century, Dwight has channeled his efforts toward using photography to promote the preservation of endangered landscapes. His photographs are held in collections in the U.S. and abroad, and have been featured in numerous group and solo exhibits including the Nature’s Best exhibit at the Smithsonian, the National Geographic sponsored International Mountain Summit in Italy, and the Capitol Rotunda.

Dwight’s photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Outdoor Photographer, Nature’s Best, Black and White Magazine, Nature Conservancy Magazine, and Photographic Magazine.  He recently won Black and White Magazine’s Single Image Spotlight Award, was a finalist in the 2018 International Color Awards, and was twice nominated for the Black and White Spider Awards. His work has been featured prominently in books, posters, calendars, websites, and annual reports in the US, Europe and Asia.

A lifelong conservationist, Dwight has also served on the boards of The Nature Conservancy’s NJ Chapter and the Summit Conservancy in his hometown of Summit, New Jersey.  He founded and curates the Annual Highlands Juried Art Exhibit with the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, now in its sixth year.

Michael Keady is President of Friends of Holland Highlands, a local citizens group that he founded in rural Holland Township in western Hunterdon County in order to oppose growing suburban sprawl on the steep slopes of this community that lies in both the Highlands Preservation and Planning Areas.  Retired after nearly 30 years in AT&T’s Public Relations Department, Mike has applied his writing, media relations and community organizing skills to stopping several developments that threatened C – 1 streams in Holland.  Originally from the Boston area, Mike has lived in Holland Township for more than 40 years.  He currently serves as Chairman of the Holland Township Environmental Commission, Vice Chairman of the Planning Board, and is chair of the Green Team under the Sustainable Jersey program.

Chief Mann has been the Turtle Clan Chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, which encompasses Passaic County, NJ, Warwick, NY and surrounding areas, for approximately twelve years. He is one of the founders of a natural growing farm known as the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm, which was created to assist the Turtle Clan realize food sovereignty and a resource for clean and healthy food.

He received the Russ Berry Foundation’s highest award for being an Unsung Hero for his people, specifically for his efforts to bring to light the health ramifications and the decades long struggle after the Ford Toxic dumping. In 2016, he was asked to speak at a forum at the University of Dayton Ohio on the effects of toxic dumping on his people. Chief Mann also engages with Ramapo College’s Environmental Master’s Program on the topics of pipelines and environmental justice. In February 2020, Chief Mann was the Keynote speaker for the Watershed Conference held on the Delaware River in Lambertville NJ.

Chief Mann has been working with NYU Environmental for the past 5 years, 2 years of which were spent creating a community health survey to address the health concerns of his community. He continues to work with NYU to date.

Chief Mann has begun the process of rebuilding the community of one of the two Churches the Ramapough communities attend. The church is listed on the National Historic Registry as a Historic Native American Church and was founded by Samuel Defreese, a Ramapough.

With long-term goals of cultural restoration, Chief Mann is currently working on co-creating the United Lunaapeewak. This project will also provide an educational aspect for the greater citizens of NJ and Southern NY. In addition, he is working with the Rutgers Newark Price Institute and Rutgers New Brunswick on a book entitled “Our Land Our Stories.”

Chief Mann is often asked to give Land Acknowledgments throughout NJ as well as NYC honoring his ancestors as well as all his relations.

He became a trustee of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition in 2020 after serving on the Legacy Council. As a former member of the Ringwood mines superfund site’s Citizen Advisory Group (CAG), Chief Mann has been at the forefront of protecting 4 million peoples drinking water. As an advocate for cultural and environmental issues he continues to this day to work tirelessly for humanity and for our natural environment.

Sergio Moncada is an environmental planner and project manager with more than a decade of experience in the design, management, monitoring, and evaluation of conservation and sustainability projects.  At National Parks Conservation, Sergio oversees campaigns to grow support for national parks in the U.S. Northeast incl. the 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and the 73.4-mile-long Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River.  Prior to NPCA, he helped manage and expand conservation projects in Latin America for two of the world’s largest conservation organizations (The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund) and launched new initiatives for two of the world’s largest animal advocacy organizations, at the intersection of factory farming and its footprint on water and air quality, community health, and animal welfare.  He holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and Policy from Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He was born and raised in Honduras, is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, and also speaks French and Portuguese. He likes to spend his free time exploring the supernova of a city where he now lives (NYC), biking, hiking in the New Jersey Highlands and northeast national parks, and volunteering for human rights and animal advocacy campaigns.

Jessica K. Murphy is the former executive director of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation and is currently the director of communications for The Arc of Essex County. She grew up on Lake Hopatcong, earned her B.S. in environmental science and journalism from the University of Richmond (studying Australian rainforest deforestation for a semester through the School for Field Studies), and earned her M.P.A. from NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She initially worked in newspaper and magazine reporting and editing, including as the first editor of the Lake Hopatcong News. In 2012, Jess helped establish the Lake Hopatcong Foundation, whose mission includes improving the health of the watershed and educating local students about lake ecology. She worked as the LHF’s first employee and served as a founding member of the board of trustees before stepping down in the fall of 2020. Jess and her husband, Chris, live in Maplewood with their four children and spend their summers on Lake Hopatcong, where together they sail, swim, kayak, fish, and enjoy the view.

Laura Oltman is an international-touring concert and recording artist.  She teaches classical guitar at Princeton University and Lafayette College.  As a member of the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo (www.guitarduo.com), Laura has performed on five continents.  She is co-founding artistic director of Raritan River Music (www.raritanrivermusic.org), New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes (www.mannesguitar.com), and Lanciano International Guitar Seminar (www.lancianoguitar.com).

Laura has lived in the Highlands for over 40 years, the last 30 along the Delaware River in Pohatcong Township, Warren County.  She has been active in local, regional, and statewide environmental issues.  She serves as director of Eco Action Initiatives of Warren County, is management coordinator of PRO’s Pohatcong Grasslands Eastern Tallgrass Prairie Bird Sanctuary, and is an active participant in Save Roaring Rock Park (www.saveroaringrockpark.org), as well as the New Jersey Highlands Coalition’s Policy Committee and Natural Heritage Committee.

Michael Soriano served as Mayor of the Township of Parsippany from 2018-2021. Michael was a steady hand as he led the Township through the pandemic and the economic hardships that followed. Prior to his election, his neighborhood and home in the Lake Hiawatha part of town were flooded as a result of 2011’s Hurricane Irene. As Mayor, he focused on initiatives to prepare Parsippany for future weather events like Hurricane Irene. He began by commissioning a new Master Plan for the township’s future that prioritized permeable surfaces and flood mitigation. Under his leadership the Township began re-engaging the municipality in the process of conformance to the Highlands Regional Master Plan. This had been withdrawn under a prior Administration for reasons that were subsequently shown to be misleading and inaccurate. Additionally, he signed and enacted the first municipal plastic bag ban in the Highlands region.

Early in 2018 he began a special project with the Open Space Institute and became instrumental in lobbying the Jersey City Council to open the Jersey City Reservoir to a public recreation trail. This also included filtering Route 287 run-off that will improve water quality in the future.

Michael is also an Eagle Scout who enjoys the outdoors. His proudest achievement is becoming a father in 2005 to his son Leo.

John Thonet is President of Thonet Associates, Inc., an environmental planning and engineering consulting firm, which he founded in 1980. He is licensed as a Professional Engineer and Professional Planner in New Jersey with more than 35 years of professional experience working in the NJ Highlands.  He serves on Boards of Trustees of the New Jersey Environmental Lobby (NJEL) and the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC) and from 1992 through 2011, served as a member, and later as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Herley Industries, Inc., an international manufacturer of electronic components, systems and subsystems for the U.S. and allied militaries.  John lives in Pittstown.

Ashwani Vasishth is Professor of Sustainability and Director of the Center for Sustainability at Ramapo College of New Jersey.  He is the founding Chair of the President’s Committee on Campus Sustainability, which has the mission of promoting sustainable practices throughout the campus and of building a deeply pervasive culture of sustainability within the community.  He is President of the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS).  His pedagogy is focused on taking a systems approach to depicting complex problems, and on Education for Sustainability (EfS) from within an interdisciplinary framework.

Sara Webb, Ph.D., is a forest ecologist, environmental scientist, and Professor emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies at Drew University, where she was founding director of the Environmental Studies and Sustainability program and previously served as Biology Department Chair.  She continues as director of the Drew Forest Preserve and its ecological restoration project.  She has taught courses and given presentations on Environmental Science, Forest Ecology, Plant Identification, Ecology and Evolution, Biological Invasions, and Restoration Ecology.  Her areas of research expertise include forest disturbance by wind and fire, paleoecology of postglacial tree migrations, the extinct passenger pigeon, the invasive Norway maple tree, forest fragmentation, and old growth forests.  She received her PhD in Ecology and M.S. in Ecology and Forest Resources from the University of Minnesota, with a B.A. from Macalester College. Contact her at swebb@drew.edu.