Michelle Craddock is a Watershed Ecologist with the MA Division of Ecological Restoration. She manages the Streamflow Restoration Program, including leading streamflow restoration projects, overseeing streamflow monitoring, and participating in state water policy analysis and development. Michelle will speak about maintaining streamflow in times of drought and flood.
Amanda Crouch-Smith is a Professional Wetland Scientist at Tighe and Bond and has worked on many wetland related challenges and regulations. She is passionate about invasive species control and shared her knowledge during WAA’s 2016 Invasive Plant Control Workshops. She will moderate the Problem Plants session.
Tom Flannery is MA Department of Conservation and Recreation's (DCR) Lakes and Ponds Program Aquatic Ecologist under the Division of Water Supply Protection/Office of Water Resources. Tom manages many aquatic plant management programs within the State Park system and also leads aquatic plant identification workshops throughout Massachusetts. He has worked for DCR over the past ten years and as a consultant in the field of lake and pond management for the five years preceding State service. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Tom will speak about how to prevent and control invasive aquatic freshwater plants.
Sara P. Gra
dy, Ph.D. is the South Shore Regional Coordinator for the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program and Watershed Ecologist at the North and South Rivers Watershed Association in Norwell, MA. She received her Bachelor of Science in Aquatic Biology from Brown
Alex Mansfield is the Ecology Program Director at the Jones River Watershed Association in Kingston, MA and is a Principal Research Scientist for Battelle Memorial Institute. For the past two decades Alex has designed and conducted environmental field programs from the tropics to the Arctic. Locally, this has included dam removal, river restoration and monitoring of coastal ecosystem health. Alex will be Master of Ceremonies as well as Moderator for the Communication Session.
Sunshine Menezes, Ph.D. has served as executive director of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography since 2006. Prior to focusing her communication efforts on improving news coverage of the environment, she developed national and state-level environmental policy, first as a Dean John Knauss National Sea Grant Marine Policy Fellow with Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. and later as part of a multidisciplinary team at the URI Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant. Sunshine received a B.S. in zoology from Michigan State University, a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, and was a Rhode Island Foundation Fellow from 2013-2014.
Sunshine frequently lectures about the importance of science communication, working with the news media, and how to become a more effective science communicator. A recent blog post is entitled Ten Communication Tips for Translational Scientists. Sunshine will discuss effective communication to engage new water protection ambassadors.
Pia Moisander, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Department of Biology. Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and M.S. from the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has postdoctoral experience from the University of California Santa Cruz and the NASA Ames Research Center, and is a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and a National Research Council Fellowship. Pia uses microbiological, molecular, genomic, and biogeochemical approaches in field and laboratory studies on aquatic microbial and phytoplankton ecology, including cyanobacterial bloom ecophysiology and nitrogen fixation. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and is an Associate editor of the Journal of Plankton Research.
Pia will deliver the plenary talk, Cyanobacteria: Its Menace, Mystery, and Mitigation.
Tom Pawlina, P.E., has been Principal and Project Manager of ATP Environmental since 1991. A registered professional engineer in Massachusetts, Tom earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Bucknell University and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. The primary focus of his work for the past twenty years has been stormwater mitigation, securing, on behalf of his municipal clients, grant funding for the study, design, and implementation of Best Management Practices (BMPs) under 604b, 319h, CPR, NPS, and MassBays competitive grant programs. Tom will speak about the Duxbury/Kingston Bay stormwater work undertaken annually since 2002 - to date, $1.65M has been expended mitigating ten stormwater outfalls with historic adverse impacts to receiving water quality.
Peter Phippen is a hydrogeologist/coastal scientist with 35 years of experience in water resources management. He holds a B.S. in hydrology from Michigan State University, an M.S. in hydrogeology from Boston University, and an M.A.L.D. in environmental landscape design from the Conway School. Currently the Coastal Coordinator for the Great Marsh region of the MassBays National Estuary Program and the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission, Mr. Phippen has planned, coordinated, and implemented projects for upper north shore municipalities addressing coastal pollution and restoration issues for over fifteen years. He has extensive experience coordinating with regional environmental organizations and managing a variety of projects to protect and restore the Massachusetts Great Marsh He will speak about controlling Phragmites as part of the Great Marsh Restoration Project.
Kate McClellan Press is an Offshore Wind Energy IGERT Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst currently researching elasmobranch electrosensitivity. She clearly communicates about her work in a manner understandable to the layperson. She also studies the use of social media to by conservation professionals to increase outreach, gather and disseminate information and connect people and organizations. Kate will speak on effective uses of social media and video to increase engagement in watershed issues and actions.
Mark P. Smith is the deputy director of The Nature Conservancy’s North America Freshwater Program. He works with Conservancy staff and partners across the country to demonstrate how environmental sustainability can be integrated into the everyday decisions of water and land managers. He also co-leads the North America Risk Reduction and Resilience Strategy, which works on mainstreaming the use of nature-based solutions in flood and storm management in ways that reduce risk, protect the environment, and enhance the livability of communities. Mark will moderate the session on Drought and Flood Resilience.
Samantha Woods has been the Executive Director of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association for over 14 years and has experience in working with communities and the public in her watershed to save water for rivers and people. She will speak about successful, innovative water conservation programs and how we can support a new water ethic.