Randy Jones, Chair
Born and raised in New Jersey, Randy Jones is the co-founder and Managing Director of The Brunswick Group, an Information Technology Consulting and Executive Search firm based in New Brunswick, NJ. Randy is an avid fly-fisherman and triathlete. He has served for nearly two decades on the Franklin Township Open Space Space Advisory Committee and over the past decade as a Board Member and Chair of the New Jersey Audubon Society. He is also a member of the Somerset County Open Space Advisory Committee and the Board of Advisors for the Rutgers University Zimmerli Art Museum. Randy resides in Franklin Park, NJ with his wife and daughter.
Lisa Plevin, Vice Chair
Lisa Plevin has worked to protect New Jersey’s environment for over 40 years. Lisa’s unique background includes working with environmental nonprofit organizations, followed by serving as a senior-level aide to US Senator Frank Lautenberg for 16 years. Senator Lautenberg sponsored many landmark environmental laws and she is very grateful to have played a role in their development and passage. Lisa then served as Chief of Staff for Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as an Appointee of President Obama. She worked closely with the senior leadership of the 900-person regional office, on a wide variety of environmental programs and projects impacting New Jersey. Most recently, Lisa served as the Executive Director of the New Jersey Highlands Council, furthering its mission to protect the resources of the Highlands Region and the drinking water it supplies to 70% of our population. Lisa is currently an active volunteer, serving on the Parsippany Environmental Advisory Committee, the Parsippany Green Team and the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Association of Environmental Commissions (ANJEC).
Philip I. Brilliant, Treasurer
Philip Brilliant, CHMM, LSRP is the owner and founder of Brilliant Environmental Services, LLC (Brilliant) a full-service environmental consulting firm. Phil is a highly accomplished professional in the field of environmental services with over 35 years of experience. He brings extensive expertise in hazardous materials management and environmental remediation, with a strong commitment to environmental sustainability. His exceptional knowledge and leadership have earned him a reputation for excellence in the industry. Phil is the Treasurer of GreenFaith, one of the oldest religious-environmental organizations in the United States seeking to work with houses of worship, religious schools and people of all faiths to help them become better environmental stewards. Phil is a graduate of Cook College/Rutgers University, frequent lecturer on site remediation in NJ and an original member of the NJ Site Remediation Professional Licensing Board. Phil has 3 grown daughters and 2 grandsons and lives in Toms River, along with his 2 rescue dogs, Leonard and Louis.
Scott Rosenberg, Secretary
Until June 2022, Scott Rosenberg was SVP/GM of Roku’s media business, where he oversaw all apps, content and advertising for the company on a global basis. Scott and his team spearheaded Roku’s dramatic revenue and profit growth, generating $2.3B in revenues in 2021, representing over 80% of the company’s revenues and all of its profits. Scott joined the company in 2012, played a key role in the company’s 2017 IPO, hired and led a cross-functional staff of roughly 1500, and was an executive officer reporting to the CEO. Scott previously co-founded and was CEO of Umami, a TV-focused mobile app. Prior to Umami, Scott led the ad business at Rovi/Tivo. Earlier in his career Scott held product and engineering roles at BlackArrow, ReplayTV, Analog Devices and Intel Corporation. Scott holds a BS in Computer Science from Princeton, an MS in EE/CS from MIT, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. He was a Fulbright Fellow to Japan. Scott is currently investing in and advising startups while he plots his next career move. Scott and his wife, Carolee Bol, focus their volunteer and philanthropic efforts on climate, environment and land preservation issues.
Joseph Basralian
Joe spent his early childhood exploring nature in the brook and wetland bordering his back yard in Franklin Lakes, and along the coast at his grandparents’ home in Lavalette. These imprints stayed deep within him during his young adult years, when he received a BA from Cornell University, earned an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, and worked in Equity Research at DLJ/Credit Suisse and Banc of America Securities.
On the eve of the “Great Recession,” he resigned from the financial world to become engaged in conservation, a period that began with a 2008 stint as a volunteer for NY LCV in Manhattan. In 2009 and now with young children, he moved back to New Jersey and worked for the NJ Audubon Society, reporting to Kelly Mooij during the successful statewide campaign for $400 million in open space funding. He then worked for three years as a fundraiser for The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey, another formative and inspiring experience.
He recently returned to the financial world full-time in New Jersey while remaining active in conservation causes. He has chaired the Chatham Township Open Space Advisory Committee since 2010, volunteers in the school district and his parish church, and is a 2016 member of the Conservation Council of The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey.
Tim Eustace
Dr. Tim Eustace, DC moved to Maywood in 1980, shortly after graduating Ramapo College earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. He moved to Louis Street with his future husband Kevin Williams. Tim ran a cleaning business while in graduate school for his Doctor of Chiropractic. Once school was done, he opened a practice on Elm Street. Shortly thereafter Tim joined the Maywood Rotary Club and was introduced to the Children's Hospital AIDS project started by Bill Rupp. This was the genesis of the idea to adopt the most neglected children in New Jersey at the time. New Jersey had the highest population of abandoned AIDS babies in the country. Tim and Kevin were lucky enough to adopt three children, one of whom died in 1991. The family worshipped at Christ Episcopal Church, Hackensack.
Through Tim's business interests he eventually became President of the Chamber of Commerce for almost 20 years, and later President of the local Rotary Club. The sudden increase in the price of parking tickets on Pleasant Ave drove Tim to seek local office. He spent 10 years on the council, holding many different duties, finally becoming Mayor in 2008. A personal passion was the redesign of Pleasant Avenue which was achieved using mostly grant money. As you see we have a thriving, vibrant business district.
In 2011 Tim was asked to run for the State Legislature. He won four successive terms, ending as Chairman of the Environment Committee and Vice-Chair of Health and Senior Services. After leaving the Legislature, he became Executive Director of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, providing drinking water to roughly three million New Jersey citizens. Tim hopes to construct the largest floating solar array in the country to be the first state agency to be totally run on green energy.
Still finding Maywood as the best little town in America, Tim continues to see patients three nights a week. He married another Maywood man in 2019. Anyone lucky enough to find love twice is lucky indeed.
Stay tuned for more adventures.
Dr. Sadaf Jaffer
Dr. Sadaf Jaffer is a scholar & policy expert with 15+ years of public engagement, higher education, & governmental expertise. Jaffer is Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer at Princeton University where she teaches courses on South Asian, Islamic, and Asian American Studies. Her research focuses on secular, feminist, and activist movements in South Asian Muslim and diasporic contexts with particular attention to the arts, literature, and popular culture. She has published with the Star-Ledger, the Hill, the Journal of Women’s History, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Huffington Post, Altmuslimah, and American Kahani.
She is passionate about mobilizing diverse stakeholders to address the needs of women, minorities, & economically under-resourced communities. Jaffer previously served in New Jersey’s state legislature where she represented the 16th Legislative District. Assemblywoman Jaffer advocated for the best interests of NJ's 9.2 million residents with special attention to her district’s 230,000 constituents. She championed increased funding for 9-1-1 call centers, teen suicide prevention programming, & translation services. Her legislative priorities included laws on election integrity, transportation, reproductive healthcare, & gun safety. She bolstered representation for women and minorities in politics as the first Asian American woman (with Ellen Park and Shama Haider) and the first Muslim American (with Shama Haider) to serve in the New Jersey Legislature.
Prior to joining the NJ legislature, Jaffer served two terms as mayor of Montgomery Township. In January of 2019, she shattered glass ceilings as the first South Asian American woman to serve as mayor in NJ and the first Muslim woman mayor of a municipality in the US. Her signature initiatives included creating and implementing a crisis communications plan to help Montgomery maintain some of the lowest COVID-19 infection and fatality rates in the state, leading the design and construction of a new municipal center and library, building trust and understanding by coordinating meetings for Black community members with the Township’s police leadership, and inaugurating a Youth Leadership Council.
Jaffer serves on numerous boards and commissions including the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, Oxfam America, and the Princeton University Art Museum. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and obtained her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality from Harvard University.
Bill Leavens
Bill Leavens grew up as a free range kid in a section of New Jersey blessed with open space and a stream. His environmental awareness was nurtured by a stint at farming in Western New Jersey. Dumping fertilizer and pesticide on fertile ground made farming seem like an extractive industry. The farm is now an organic CSA, operated by a professional farmer.
He was tapped as President of Musconetcong Watershed in 2000 and remained in that position throughout a decade that saw the Musconetcong given Federal designation as New Jersey’s third ‘Wild and Scenic’ river. Also on Mr. Leavens watch, the MWA demolished two dams in Hackettstown and constructed a LEED Platinum headquarters from a donated, abandoned building. He attributes those achievements to the excellent board and staff he works with. Mr. Leavens serves as Chairman of the Washington Township (Morris) Planning Board and is a member of the Township's Environmental Commission. Bill kayaks in and flies an antique Luscombe over the Musconetcong Valley, photographing the Association's dam removal and riparian restoration projects.
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 BA from Harvard University and an MPhil from University College London, both in philosophy, and a JD from Harvard Law School. In addition to serving on the board of New Jersey LCV, he serves on the boards of the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment, and New Jersey Future.
Kris Ohleth
Kris Ohleth has worked in the offshore wind sector for over 20 years, since the days of the industry’s inception in the United States, and is a true expert in the field. Holding senior positions with offshore wind developers, NGOs, and state agencies, she has gained critical insights into the policy and regulations that shape offshore wind activities at the state, regional, and federal levels. She has worked at the critical intersection of market development, stakeholder engagement, permitting, and regulatory affairs as one of the earliest adopters of and advocates for offshore wind in the US.
In her current role as the Director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, she leads the organization to develop and implement strategies that support the responsible and sustainable development of the offshore wind sector. Originally from New Jersey, she is a Rutgers University graduate, has a Master’s degree from the University of Rhode Island, and currently lives in Morris County, New Jersey with her husband and retired-racing greyhounds.
Anne O. Poole
Anne Poole is the volunteer President of the Board of the New Jersey Environmental Lobby (NJEL), a statewide membership organization that focuses on protecting New Jersey’s air, land, and water resources. She is also a Trustee of NJEL’s education arm, the Environmental Education Fund. Anne’s career was spent in the finance, real estate, and transportation sectors, except for a stint in social services, which she considers the most valuable experience of her work life. Prior to her retirement she was a contractor for the Federal Transit Administration, performing compliance reviews of transit systems that received urbanized area formula grant funds.
During her financial and transportation career, Anne was a member of the Women’s Transportation Seminar, serving as the President of the Philadelphia Chapter, as National Scholarship Chair and as a Fundraising Chair for the National Conference.
Anne holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Fairleigh Dickinson University and an MBA from Temple University. She is a lifelong resident of New Jersey, dividing her time between the family home in Pemberton Township and Wildwood, where she tries to convince others that offshore wind farms are essential to New Jersey’s sustainability and beautiful to watch.
Anne spends a great deal of time gardening, cooking, and traveling with her four children, six grandchildren, friends, and large extended family.
Jaclyn Rhoads
Dr. Jaclyn Rhoads is the Assistant Executive Director of Pinelands Preservation Alliance. She received her Doctorate degree in Environmental Policy and Bachelor’s and Master’s in Environmental Science from Drexel University. She further pursued a certificate in executive management of non-profits from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on many boards and committees including the Darby Creek Valley Association, Friends of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey League of Conservation Voters political committee, and the Norwood Shade Tree/Environmental Advisory Council.
She is the Vice-Chair of the Delaware County Sustainability Commission and was on the transition team for Delaware County Council that created the model for the Sustainability Commission. Dr. Rhoads manages the policy and science staff at PPA, leads the organization’s activities for the Delaware River Watershed Initiative and Landscape Makeover Program, and primarily handles lobbying efforts.
Scott Rotman
A longtime active member of the environmental community, Scott Rotman’s career started in general law practice, and quickly focused on environmental law when he enrolled in the PhD program in Natural Resources Management at SUNY-ESF.
He has managed or contributed to projects in the transportation, energy, and research sectors in widely divergent ecosystems, from Alaskan tundra to Death Valley. His focus for the past decade has been transportation, and particularly transit. He also spent one legislative session with the Vermont State Legislature, drafting legislation in the Natural Resources and Transportation sectors, particularly for the House Transportation Committee. Over the course of his career, he has saved hundreds of homes, unique natural features, important wildlife habitat and culturally significant places from destruction by working with agencies and engineers to develop more appropriate solutions to transportation problems.
He has also served on the boards of Save Our Shores (Santa Cruz, CA) and the Glens Falls Area Youth Center (Glens Falls, NY). His passions include skiing, running, climbing, and pretty much anything that gets him on top of a mountain.
Arnold Schmidt
Arnold has a BS in Environmental Science and was a NJ licensed Registered Environmental Health Specialist. He retired in 2018 from his Union County position of 30 years in which he coordinated and supervised the County’s Environmental Health Compliance and Enforcement programs enforcing NJDEP regulations. Arnie’s responsibilities included preparing and signing off on violation, settlement and discovery documents as well as conducting settlement hearings with responsible parties upon their compliance. Prior to working for the County Arnie worked for 12 years as an Associate Toxicologist and Regulatory Affairs Coordinator for Revlon Research in New York and then New Jersey. He was appointed to the NJ Noise Control Council by Governor Corzine in 2006 and has been the chair since 2016. He lives in Franklin Township (Somerset County) with his wife and is an appointed member of several township committees including the Environmental Commission, which he chaired for 3 years, the Open Space Advisory Committee, and the Shade Tree Commission. In 2018 he was inducted into his High School Sports Hall of Fame.
Julia Somers
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.
Robin Suydam
Robin has been a business and community leader in Central Jersey for the past 45 years. For 40 years, she led her family’s insurance agency business, specializing in business and not-for-profit clients throughout New Jersey. In 1991 Robin was the first woman elected as President of the Professional Insurance Agents of NJ and served on regional and national trade association boards.
Since 1993, Robin has served on the Board of Directors of Franklin Mutual Insurance Company (FMI), based in Branchville, NJ. Currently chairing the Outside Directors Committee, Robin helps to lead this mutual insurance company that was formed in Franklin Township, Somerset County in 1879. Her community work has included 7 years on the board of the Central Jersey Community Development Corporation, 7 years on the board of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and now serving in her 10th year on the State Theatre, New Brunswick Board of Trustees, where she is the current Development Chair. A key interest is her current work as Vice-Chair of the Franklin Township Environmental Commission (Somerset County) and member of Franklin’s Open Space Advisory Committee.
Robin is an Elder at the Six Mile Run Reformed Church in Franklin Park and serves on the national board of Creation Justice Ministries, an ecumenical advocacy and education organization in Washington DC.
A graduate of Bucknell University, Robin is married to Paul Corkery for 27 years and lives on her family farm in Somerset. Languages and travel are what keep her exploring the world as often as she can.