ABOUT US
Meet the Unite for Parks Team. Integrity, Intelligence, Energy
Deanna Lynn Wulff
Executive Director
Michael Kellett
National Park Advisor
Michael is the co-founder and executive director of RESTORE, has been a wilderness and national parks activist for more than 35 years. From 1986 through 1992, he worked as the northeast director and Michigan representative of The Wilderness Society. He has visited more than 250 National Park System units in 45 states and U.S. territories. Michael has served on the board of American Lands Alliance, Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance, Thoreau Farm Trust, and Walden Forever Wild, as well as on the advisory board of the Walden Woods Project and Save Our Heritage. He lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and supports parks across the nation. He is a board member of Unite 4 Parks.
Deanna is the founder of Unite for Parks, building on a decade of work in conservation. She is also an award-winning author and parks advocate with a deep love of and commitment to the Sierra Nevada and National Parks everywhere. For more than 20 years, she has been a project manager and editor, organizing complex technical projects on a diverse set of topics. While working as a consultant, she explored the west and the world, developing a comprehensive understanding of the American landscape. She has been a ranger, a river guide, and a yoga instructor. Her outdoor experience, organizational skills and adaptability laid the ground work for her role as the founder and executive director of Unite for Parks. After a decade in grassroots to grasstops advocacy, she is taking her experience to a national platform, and defending National Parks both their existence and their creation across the United States. Learn more here.
Each town should have a park… a common possession forever. Henry David Thoreau. Journal October 15, 1859
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lowell Young
California Policy Lead
Lowell Young
Central Valley Advocate
Lowell is an expert birder, environmental advocate and formerly the President of Yosemite Area Audubon. He is the winner of the Charles H. Callison Award for volunteerism, Audubon's highest national honor. He has pursued environmental and social justice all his life, working on the Audubon's campaign to save the tri-colored blackbird. Audubon recently designated the Southern Sierra Nevada Important Bird Area (IBA) in his honor - it is the second largest IBA in the nation. Read more about it here.. He also worked on the successful campaign to prevent smoking inside California Restaurants, and has been a delegate and active member of the California Democratic Party Executive Board. He is a board member of Unite 4 Parks.
Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. C. S. Lewis
Dr. Marc Bendick Jr.
Economic Advisor
Marc is an economist at Bendick and Egan, who specializes in research on public policy issues regarding employment, discrimination, poverty, and social and economic inequality. He has published 140 research papers primarily on employment opportunities. His work often involves developing quantitative measures of employment discrimination. He has been an expert witness in many large class action lawsuits involving discrimination. His work has been cited in 44 Federal court opinions including the Supreme Court. In 2022, he received the Impact for Equality Award from the Equal Rights Center in Washington DC.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue. George Bernard Shaw
Katie Kalkhof
Southern Sierra Nevada Forest Ambassador
Katie is leading the campaign to protect the Southern Sierra Nevada with diplomacy, good will and collaboration with the local community. She an avid outdoorswoman, a youth leader, and an expert birder. She began her career as a Veterinary Technician and in her youth developed an affinity for the Allegheny Mountain Woodlands in Pennsylvania. When she moved to California, her passion for the golden state's diverse environment was ignited. Now living in Fresno, she feels most at home in the vast wilderness of the Sierra Nevada. She serves as the Outreach Chair for the Fresno Audubon Society and clinical staff for the Bay Area Street Dog Coalition, and she dedicates her heart and her time to the wild lands and communities she holds dear. Contact her here.
You are going somewhere. Every day. Every experience you get. You're moving forward. Jimmy Chin
Dr. Susan A. Masino
Science Advisor
Susan A. Masino, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Applied Science at Trinity College in Hartford CT. Dr. Masino is the chair of the Open Space Committee in Simsbury, CT, is the Hartford County Coordinator for the Old Growth Forest Network, and was a Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard University. Her laboratory-based research focuses on mechanisms of brain health and disease, and her scholarship outside the lab focuses on the power of wild nature to stabilize the climate, support communities, and protect the web of life.
Nature is not more complicated than we think, it is more complicated than we CAN think. Dr. Frank Edwin Egler, plant ecologist