Richard Louv is chairman and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network and the author of seven books, including his most recent, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin). He is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal. Past recipients have included Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson and Jimmy Carter. He has served as an adviser to the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award program, is a member of the Citistates Group, appears often on national radio and television programs, and speaks frequently in the United States and overseas. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers and magazines, and was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and Parents magazine. Married to Kathy Frederick Louv, he is the father of two young men, Jason and Matthew. He is working on his eighth book, but would rather be fishing.

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Cheryl Charles, Ph.D., is President, CEO, and co-founder of C&NN. Cheryl is an innovator, entrepreneur, author, and educator who is among those instrumental in developing the worldwide movement to reconnect children and nature. She is the former founding national director of Project Learning Tree and Project WILD, the two most widely used environment education programs for K-12 educators in North America. She is Assistant Deputy Chairman for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s www.iucn.org Commission on Education and Communication.  Cheryl is also Managing Partner of Hawksong Associates www.hawksongassociates.com, a consulting firm specializing in organizational development and diffusion of innovation. Cheryl’s most recent book, with her husband, Bob Samples, is Coming Home:  Community, Creativity and Consciousness (2004). Cheryl has a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Washington with a specialty in factors affecting the achievement of minority youth. She speaks internationally about the benefits of nature to children.

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Martin LeBlanc is Vice-President and a co-founder of C&NN.  He is the National Youth and Special Projects Director of the Sierra Club, the largest and oldest Conservation group in North America.  Martin oversees the organization’s youth programs and special projects related to non-traditional partnerships to connect children to the outdoors. The Sierra Club’s Military Families Outdoors program www.sierraclub.org/militaryhttp://www.sierraclub.org/military  has helped connect thousands of military children to the outdoors and was highlighted by the Obama Administration’s 2009 Summer of Service kick off.

As a leading advocate for efforts relating to children and nature at the local, state and regional level, Martin works closely with the Obama Administration’s “Let’s Move” initiative on childhood obesity, as well as the 2010 White House “America’s Great Outdoors” campaign.

A founder of C&NN’s Natural Leaders Network www.naturalleaders.org, Martin heads the initiative to encourage young people to become leaders of the children and nature movement. A passionate speaker, he has presented to over 30 organizations in the United States and Canada, inspiring audiences throughout North America.

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Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D. is co-founder and C&NN board member.  Founding Director of the University of Minnesota’s ground-breaking Children, Youth & Family Consortium, and now serving as Consultant and Director Emeritus, Marti Erickson is well-known for her research and writing on parent-child attachment, children’s mental health, and strategies for working with high-risk children and families. Marti is a popular speaker throughout the U.S. and abroad and has been honored by state and national organizations for her outstanding contributions to psychology. With an interest in translating research for general audiences, Marti also appears weekly on Twin Cities television and hosts a weekly radio show, “Good Enough Moms,” with her daughter, Erin Erickson Garner. Marti is passionate about the role of nature in children’s development and hopes to spur not only a movement to reunite children with the natural world, but also more rigorous, extensive research on this critical topic in human development. A developmental psychologist specializing in parent-child attachment, child abuse prevention, and children’s mental health, Marti is a well-known speaker and author in those fields.

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Amy Pertschuk is an award winning designer and internet entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in information design and technology. In 1991 she co-founded Communication Wave (C-Wave) a multi-media design studio with a focus on natural history museums and aquariums. C-Wave’s client list includes the American Museum of Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, SFMOMA, Scholastic, Apple, Adobe, and Hasboro. In 1998, she co-founded eNature.com , the Web’s premier online nature-discovery resource. Pertschuk designed and developed C&NN’s online strategy and continues to manage the ever-expanding Web site and social media resources to serve the needs of the growing children and nature movement. She is currently serving as C&NN’s managing director and is part of the strategic planning and implementation team. She also serves as a member of the board of directors for Hooked on Nature and is chair of the garden committee at Willow Creek Academy, the local public charter school.

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From 1966-70, Mike Pertschuk served as Consumer Counsel (later Staff Director and Chief Counsel) to the Democratic Majority of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce. In that capacity, he was charged with shepherding through the Senate, and Senate-House Conferences, the series of landmark consumer protection, public health, and environmental laws.  In 1977, Mike Pertschuk was named by President Carter as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.  Pertschuk, as Chair, pursued a series of aggressive regulatory initiatives, including his proposed rule banning all advertising targeted to children. In 1984, along with David Cohen, Pertschuk created the Advocacy Institute, to build the capacity of citizen groups to advocate policies in the public interest.  He has written more than 20 guides on media advocacy and four books on effective—and ineffective—strategies for citizen advocacy, especially media advocacy. He is a founding Board member of The Frameworks Institute and an advisor to Environics Strategic Initiatives Forum.

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