Meet our board of directors. These individuals passionately volunteer their time to promote a healthy Lake Wingra through an active watershed community.
FOLW Board of Directors (2022-2023)
Gail Epping Overholt (Chair)
Gail is a senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin and the Education Coordinator of the UW-Madison Arboretum. She holds a BS in Elementary Science Education (1987) and an MS in Water Resource Management (1993) with an emphasis on wetlands and public education, both degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gail has worked in natural resources education for over 25 years, with a good majority of that time focusing on watershed, stormwater and Great Lakes issues. She has held board positions for the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education, the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, the Friends of Cedarburg Bog, and a short time for Milwaukee Riverkeeper before moving north to the shores of Lake Superior. Her personal goal is to help people of all ages see the “land” as a community of soil, water, and living organisms—not excluding people. Having a special affinity for looking at issues with her eyes on the water, she has enjoyed her time exploring the shores of Lake Wingra and the flora and fauna that call it home.
Tim Kuhman (Vice Chair)
Tim joined the board of directors in 2017. He is an associate professor of Biological Sciences at Edgewood College. Tim completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. His research focused on the role of land-use history in shaping patterns of plant invasion in the southern Appalachains. Since joining the faculty at Edgewood in 2009, Tim has continued conducting research on invasive plants at the UW Arboretum and around the Madison area. He has also expanded his research interests to study oak savannah restoration and fire ecology. Tim teaches a variety of botany and ecology classes, and especially enjoys bringing his students into the field and out on Lake Wingra. When Tim is not in class or in his office overlooking the lake, he enjoys biking, canoeing, fly fishing, gardening and spending time with his wife and three children.
David Thompson
David joined the board in 2010 and was elected Secretary in 2011. David did his undergraduate work at Stanford University. He majored in Biology and graduated with honors. Then he obtained his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1974 from the UW-Madison where he specialized in Animal Behavior and Ornithology. He did his thesis on penguins in the Antarctic. From 1974-1979, David taught Zoology, Anatomy & Physiology, Ornithology, and Conservation at the UW Center System in Washington County. During much of this time, he was also a consultant in Wildlife Biology to the U.S. Corps of Engineers. From 1990-1995, David served as Education Director at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. His interests include gardening with native plants, travel, taking photos that illustrate environmental issues, and serving as a volunteer for a lake similar to Lake Wingra, located in Hawksnest State Park, Massachusetts.
Katy Bradford (Secretary, Treasurer)
Katy joined the Board of Directors in December 2021. She’s a lifelong resident of the Great Lakes states and first moved to Madison in 2013 for her MS degree in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development at UW-Madison. She has taken her skills in social science research, evaluation and natural resources outreach to support a variety of grants and programs over the years, and she is currently the program manager for Water Action Volunteers, a UW-Madison Extension and Wisconsin DNR statewide citizen science stream monitoring program. Katy enjoys searching for birds and buzzing pollinators in natural areas around Madison, and strives to plant as many native and, ideally, edible plants as she can in her yard.
Toni Tiemann
Toni Tiemann (she/her) joined the Board of Directors in August 2022. She moved to Madison three years ago from Boston and has been living along Lake Wingra ever since, enjoying the paddling, birding, and running the area has to offer. Toni specializes in marketing, working full-time as an Account Director at a Gupta Media, a full-service digital media agency. Toni also comes with hands-on non-profit experience, working for two years at Farm Aid as the food and farm organization’s volunteer coordinator. She also worked at the Appalachian Mountain Club, an outdoor recreation and conservation non-profit for which she assisted with paid marketing and programming efforts. Toni is deeply committed to equity and inclusion, recently completing two programs with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce: the Inclusive Managers Certificate and the Transformational DEI Certificate.
ADVISORS TO THE BOARD
Denny Caneff
Matt Diebel
Anne Forbes
Tyler Leeper
Jim Lorman
John Magnuson
John Nicol
Rebecca Power
Ben Yahr