New Jersey League of Conservation Voters

Sandy Batty is the Executive Director of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), a statewide nonprofit organization that helps environmental commissions and municipal officials throughout New Jersey protect natural resources. Before becoming Executive Director in 2002, Ms Batty was ANJEC's Assistant Director, editor of the quarterly ANJEC Report and supervisor of ANJEC publications.  She currently serves as Chairman of the Mountain Lakes Planning Board. Previously she served as a member of the town's environmental commission, and was elected to two terms on the Borough Council.

Michele became Executive Director of NJCF in 1999.  Prior to becoming Executive Director, she served as Assistant Director and spearheaded NJCF’s work in the Pine Barrens, helping found the Pinelands Preservation Alliance and Whitesbog Preservation Trust.  In 1995 Michele was appointed to the State Planning Commission and was named as Vice Chair in 1998. She served as Chair of New Jersey State Committee of the Highlands Coalition, and former Chair of New Jersey’s Freshwater Wetlands Mitigation Council.  In 2003, Michele was appointed by Governor McGreevey to serve on the Highlands Task Force, and is a board member of the Center for Non-Profit Corporations.  Michele also serves as Advisor to the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance, is a member of the NJ Trails Council, and a member of The Hopewell Township Mercer County Open Space Committee.  She was a former President of the Whitesbog Preservation Trust, and served on the Burlington County Agriculture Development Board for over ten years.  Michele has a BA in Biology, Western State College, Gunnison, Colorado. She resides in Hopewell, Mercer County.

Tim Dillingham serves as the Executive Director of the American Littoral Society (ALS), a national membership based coastal conservation organization in Sandy Hook, New Jersey.  The Littoral Society’s mission is to promote the study and conservation of coastal habitats, living resources and environmental quality. The Society is one of the oldest coastal conservation organizations in the nation, established in 1961. Tim has a BS in biology, and a graduate degree in coastal and marine resource management from the University of Rhode Island. Previously he worked as the Director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, and serves as a Board member for the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. He lives in Hopewell Borough, with his wife Barbara Reale and his three children. 

Jim currently serves on the Boards of Directors of The New Jersey Planning Officials, New Jersey Future, and the New Jersey Highlands Coalition where he works to promote responsible and sustainable land use and quality of life. In the past, he has served on the Board of Directors of many noteworthy civic groups in New Jersey, including  New Jersey Common Cause, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation and the Advisory Board of the Bloustein School of Public Policy and Planning at Rutgers University.   He has also served as the first Chairman of the New Jersey State Planning Commission and as the Chairman of the Englewood Planning Board. As a committed comprehensive land use planner and environmentalist, Jim brings decades of leadership at municipal, regional, and state levels to NJLCV’s Board. He works at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., where he is a Managing Director.

Tom joined the Trust for Public Land in January of 2008 to direct state and local conservation finance initiatives in the mid-Atlantic region.  Since then, Tom has helped to design and pass seven successful county and local ballot measures to finance parks and land conservation in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.   As Chair of the NJ Keep It Green Campaign, a coalition of over 140 organizations working to renew and strengthen the Garden State Preservation Trust, he led a successful statewide campaign to pass a $400 million bond measure on the Nov. 2009 ballot to continue open space preservation efforts in New Jersey.  Prior to joining TPL, Tom served as Director of Eastern Forest Conservation for the Wilderness Society and Executive Director of the regional Highlands Coalition where he led successful efforts to pass federal and New Jersey state legislation to protect the Highlands.  He was also the mid-Atlantic coordinator for Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation in the national Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA) campaign. He earned his M.S. in Natural Resources Planning from the University of Vermont.

Chris is pleased to be a partner in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Division's Partner for Fish & Wildlife Program, working to improve the wildlife habitat on her property in northwest Warren county.  Formerly a research psychologist specializing in social cognition, Chris has for years been an environmental activist, serving on the boards of The Morris Land Conservancy, The Great Swamp Watershed Association, Morris Tomorrow, and The N.J. Highlands Coalition.  In her former town of Madison, Chris founded the land use advocacy group, Madison Matters, to counter development forces, then served on Madison's Zoning Board, Planning Board, and Environmental Commission.  As the first Chair of Madison's Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund Committee, Chris worked on open space acquisitions and the protection of 18th century structures.  She and her husband divide their time between Hardwick, NJ and Manhattan.

Debbie Mans is the Baykeeper and Executive Director of NY/NJ Baykeeper, a conservation and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting, preserving and restoring the Hudson-Raritan Estuary (www.nynjbaykeeper.org).  Prior to joining Baykeeper, Ms. Mans was the Environmental and Energy Policy Advisor for Governor Jon S. Corzine.  She was also appointed by Governor Corzine to the New Jersey State Planning Commission.  Prior to working for the Governor, Ms. Mans was the Policy Director at Baykeeper, a position she held from 2002 through 2006.  Ms. Mans is a graduate of The University of Michigan and holds a J.D. from Vermont Law School.  Ms. Mans is on the board of NJ Future.

Carleton Montgomery

Carleton became the second executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance in 1998.  An attorney by training, he practiced law at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in its Washington, D.C. office for nearly 12 years, the last four years as a partner in the firm’s litigation practice.  Since joining the Alliance, Carleton has worked with his colleagues to strengthen both its advocacy and its education initiatives, with the goal of ensuring the New Jersey Pine Barrens ecosystem will survive, and its regional conservation and sustainable development will succeed, in the nation’s most crowded state.  Carleton has a B.A. from Harvard University and an M. Phil. from University College London, both in philosophy, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.  In addition to the NJ League of Conservation Voters, he serves on the boards of the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment, and New Jersey Future.

Born and raised in NJ, and an avid outdoorswoman, Kelly became interested in environmental issues at a young age. She received a BA in Political Science from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI., and then attended Vermont Law School, the preeminent environmental law school in the country, completing a Juris Doctorate and Master of Studies in Environmental Law focusing on marine biodiversity and land and water use issues. She was admitted to practice law in the State of New Jersey and the Federal District Court of New Jersey in December, 2003. Kelly is the Director of Government Relations at NJ Audubon, where she is actively involved in conservation initiatives at the State and federal level that conserve habitat, preserve open space and protect species, particularly threatened and endangered species and increase conservation funding. Under her direction, the Government Relations unit has had a number of conservation successes including many working successfully in coalition. For example, as Coordinator  of the NJ Keep It Green Campaign, a coalition of over 150 organizations working to renew and strengthen the Garden State Preservation Trust, Kelly worked to ensure significant funding to continue open space preservation efforts in New Jersey.  Kelly lives in Trenton and is currently a member of the Mercer County Agricultural Development Board.

Julia Somers is Executive Director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, which represents a diverse network of organizations — small and large, local, regional, and statewide — and individuals. Its mission is to represent their common goal to protect, enhance and restore the resources of the New Jersey Highlands and to preserve the quality and quantity of drinking water both for the 850,000 people who live in the Highlands as well as the more than four million people living elsewhere in the state who depend on Highlands water.  Prior to 2006, Julia was Executive Director of the Great Swamp Watershed Association, a membership-based organization working to protect the land and water of the ten towns of the Great Swamp watershed in Morris and Somerset Counties.  Julia serves on the Boards of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment and the New Jersey Environmental Lobby.  She also serves on her community's Open Space Committee.  Julia, her husband and family live in Green Village.

Jim Waltman 

Jim Waltman is the Executive Director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, a position he has held since April 2005.  The Watershed Association protects clean water and the environment in central New Jersey through conservation, advocacy, science and education.  Jim also serves as a member of the State Agriculture Development Committee, which oversees New Jersey’s farmland preservation program, a position to which Governor Corzine appointed him in 2008.  Prior to joining the Watershed Association, he was the Director of Wildlife Programs for the Wilderness Society between 1995 and 2005 and Wildlife Specialist for the National Audubon Society between 1990 and 1995.  Both of these positions were in Washington, D.C.   Jim graduated from Princeton University with honors in biology and he received a master’s degree in environmental studies from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.