Our Board Members
Amos Baehr
Veteran of Standing Rock. Student of Braiding Sweetgrass.
Louis Cox
Louis Cox is a homesteader and part-time handyman, with many years of experience in organic gardening while seeking to be an example of ecological sustainability. A founding member of Sustainable Charlotte, he has participated in all of the organization's annual repair cafes, electronic waste recycling sites, and WindowDressers workshops. He and his wife Ruah Swennerfelt live in a hand-made house in East Charlotte that is 100-percent solar powered.
Jamey Gerlaugh
Have worn too many hats for my own good. A vagabond who lived in 9 states on the east coast. Did a bit of electrical engineering and then got nature bug and switched into environmental sustainability. Geeked out with aircraft control systems and underwater tidal turbines. Played on boats surveying rivers, and building canoe camping platforms in the swamps of the Roanoke River. Hawked solar panels and pushed Latin American rainforest handicrafts. Known to work on farms fixing old equipment. Ponder ways of pulling together diverse sets of people, and making something happen, especially in issues around global warming. Currently battling climate change as an Efficiency Vermont consultant. At Sustainable Charlotte you can find me coordinating our free fixit gathering (the Repair Cafe) and our storm window insert program (WindowDressers). For fun you will find me exploring nature with the family.
John Howe
John works for the State of Vermont providing pre-release vocational counseling to incarcerated individuals. As an avid runner, hiker, painter and meditator John finds deep connection with the natural world. John is also on the Board of All Souls Interfaith Gathering, where he occasionally facilitates Sunday morning meditation. He served as an EMT on Charlotte Rescue for six years. He has been a trustee for his union, the Vermont State Employee Association. He seeks ways to minimize his own impact on climate change by making both small and large life style changes, and by working with others to address system problems. Since installing a solar array on his front lawn John has come to appreciate the significance of photovoltaic panels much the way telephone, and electric wires may have delighted his grandparents when they arrived in southern Vermont.
Cathy Hunter
Cathy feels very lucky to be able to call Charlotte home since 1996. For 4 decades she worked as an educator and counselor before becoming a massage therapist in 2019. When she's not working or volunteering for Sustainable Charlotte you'll find her gardening, searching for wild edibles in the woods, biking, hiking, skiing, practicing yoga and meditation, reading, making herbal concoctions or agitating for social change or environmental protection.
Julia Parker-Dickerson
Julia Parker-Dickerson's passion throughout her career has been focused on environmental education. She is a teacher at Monkton Central School in Monkton, VT and a Master Gardener. In her small rural corner of Charlotte, Vermont she has been working with the local town government and neighbors to reclaim spaces at intersections and along roadsides and create beautiful gardens for all creatures, great and small, to enjoy.
Wolfger Schneider
Born at the beginning of World War II into a self-sufficient, nearly late medieval farming village in Germany, surprisingly formed Wolfger’s current view of human settlements 70 years later. Helping create that view was living in the mid-Atlantic region of the US with its rapid, unplanned growth.
After having practiced human-created engineering for 40 years at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, Wolfger now believes that the best engineering on the planet has already been done and evidence of its products are all around us in nature for us to learn from, appreciate, and respect. We need to learn to live within that marvelous natural system without ruining or destroying it, as we are currently doing with our unsustainable numbers, our hubris, and our capitalist economic system ever dependent on economic growth in a world of limited resources.
Ruah Swennerfelt
Ruah Swennerfelt is an activist, homesteader, and author. She served as General Secretary for Quaker Earthcare Witness for 17 years and then became seriously involved in the work of the International Transition Movement, and authored the book Rising to the Challenge: The Transition Movement and People of Faith. She is a founding member of Sustainable Charlotte Vermont which is a Transition Initiative, and a member of Middlebury Friends Meeting (Quakers).
Ruah serves on the Transition US board as well as Sustainable Charlotte board. She is also active in the Charlotte Grange, the loosely formed Charlotte Community Partners, and the Middlebury Friends’ Earthcare Committee.
She and her husband, Louis Cox grow most of their vegetables and fruits, make their own electricity and heat their water from the sun, attempting to live lives that are simple, rich, and meaningful.
Karen Tuininga
Karen lives with her extended family in Charlotte where she gardens, canoes, and works to promote local resilience and support transition in her community. Karen completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2014 and has served as an organizer for New Hampshire's Permaculture Day before moving to Vermont. She is a project leader in the UVM Cooperative Extension Master Gardener and Master Composter programs, and co-coordinates the Charlotte Seed Library program which offers gardener support and education in addition to heirloom seeds. In addition to her work supporting SCV, Karen has served with the Transition US National Gathering planning group and Collaborative Design Council. She's retired from a career in Information Technology and Training -- and when she's not too busy volunteering, she works part time as a bookkeeper.
Margaret Woodruff
Margaret is the director of the Charlotte Library. She is the founder of the Vermont Sustainable Libraries Working Group and grateful that the Charlotte Library is working toward sustainable library certification along with eight other libraries.
Mike Yantachka
Mike is a former State Representative for the town of Charlotte and part of neighboring Hinesburg. He served 12 years in the Vermont House, six on the Natural Resources and Energy Committee and six on the Energy and Technology Committee. His work helped grow Vermont's renewable energy resources and broadband infrastructure and supported climate change mitigation strategies. He is now serving on the Charlotte Energy Committee.
He and his wife of 53 years have five grown children and 9 grandchildren. They enjoy the outdoors and hike 12 months of the year. Mike has been a member of the Sustainable Charlotte steering committee since 2012, and participates in many of the projects as time permits.