OUR STAFF

Jeanne McCarty

Jeanne McCarty

Executive Director

Growing up in the Piney Woods of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Jeanne spent hours watching the frogs and crawdads in the meandering creek behind her family’s home.  more

Jeff Cross

Jeff Cross 

Director of Finance and Operations

Counting has always been one of Jeff’s strengths. When he was a kid, his parents commissioned him to pull weeds for pennies in the backyard. After a few hours, Jeff did the math.  more

 
Crouch 

Carolyn Crouch 

Grants and Partnerships Assistant

Carolyn loved adventures with her big brother in the creek bed of the ravine behind their childhood home in Central Texas. She has fond memories of those warm summer days raiding the honeysuckle vine that covered the back gate...more

 
 Sarah Darley

Sarah Darley 

Grants and Partnerships Coordinator

It was under the towering pine trees at her family’s lake house in East Texas that Sarah first stood in awe of nature and came to appreciate being small…and yet a part of something greater.  more

 
Scott Feille

Scott Feille 

Regional Program Director

For Scott, fishing trips with Granddad “J” at Caddo Lake in East Texas weren’t about fishing. “Looking back, catching fish was secondary,” he recalls.  more

Matt Hackler

Matt Hackler

Director of Development

As a child, Matt's experience of gardening came from his grandparent’s one-acre garden in East Texas.  He dreaded being awakened on those early summer mornings...  more

 Kendra Lemon

Kendra Lemon

Program Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator

During Kendra’s childhood in Detroit, Michigan, she enjoyed many years as a very active and involved Girl Scout, participating from early elementary school through high school. She has fond memories of learning and exploring nature...more



Nancy Payne

Nancy Payne, TCNP 

Project Manager

Growing up in the Puerto Rico mountains, with her home surrounded by a lush coffee plantation on two sides and a zoo with roaring lions and elephants on the other, Nancy remembers treading dirt roads, past tall grasses... more

Kerry Renta

Kerry Renta 

Garden Design Consultant

Kerry grew up in a small, North Central Texas farming town surrounded by corn, cotton and sorghum fields. Hiding in tall rows of corn, he’d try to ambush meadowlarks. “Thank goodness I was unsuccessful,” he remembers.  more

Ellen Robinson

Ellen Robinson

Educator

After a childhood of summers spent exploring the countryside with her family in a tiny pop-up camper, Ellen felt herself pulled towards mountains as a young adult. After graduating, she moved from Illinois to Colorado where she lived at the base of the Rockies... more


Eric Vanderbeck

Eric Vanderbeck (Mr. V.)

Educator

Deep in the quiet woods behind his home, 10-year-old Eric felt content and protected as he explored nature’s hidden mysteries, poking his finger into every conceivable crevice for investigations of what lived there.  more

 
Wardle 

Kelly Wardle

Executive Assistant

Kelly grew up in the arroyos of Santa Fe, New Mexico, wandering the natural trails, creating her own, and always stopping along the way for good climbing trees. A child of the outdoors, she came to believe that every pair of knees needs one good scar...more

 
 

Angela Buffington 

Program Team Intern

Texas Christian University


 
 

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