Natural Land Institute
Kerry has worked in restoration ecology for much of her career and has a MA in Landscape Architecture. Her passion is protecting and restoring the natural communities of northern Illinois including working with rare and globally impaired ecosystems. She has also worked regionally doing watershed planning, facility planning area and wastewater treatment reviews for the IEPA, and Great Lakes restoration work with other regional planning agencies and local governments.
Kerry became the Executive Director at NLI in 2013. She served as a Vital Lands Illinois network architect for that statewide collaboration and is now on the board of the Prairie State Conservation Coalition and was appointed by the Governor to the IDNR Advisory Board.
She is passionately committed to creative and enhanced partnerships and collaborative work approaches for impactful land protection for healthy soil, water and air, and for effective stewardship, as she has seen amazing results from those collaborations.
Kerry grew up in DeKalb in her early years. She has lived in over 30 residences, 7 countries and 2 US states. She attended 6 different high schools in 4 years and did all my higher education in Great Britain where she raised her family for many years before returning to Illinois in 1990.
Kerry will discuss the history of the Natural Land Institute and her plans for the future. This will be in interesting and informative program about an area treasure. This will be an opportunity to bring a guest or prospective member to Memorial Hall or join us via Zoom. Helen Hill will introduce our presenter and act as Rotary Host.