Curent Officers
Karen Wogsland, President
Karen headed west to the Rocky Mountains as soon as she possibly could. After obtaining her BS in Geology from Colorado State University and her MS from the University of Montana, she spent many a day (and night) on drill rigs working to clean-up contaminated groundwater on hazardous waste sites. Done with donning Tyvek attire, she moved on to clean water, consulting in water rights and then restoring streamflows to Colorado’s rivers at a non-profit, the Colorado Water Trust. She has served as president of the Colorado Chapter of the American Water Resources Association and on the Environmental Considerations Workgroup for Colorado’s Demand Management Feasibility Study. She is thrilled to call the Yampa Valley her home and equally thrilled to join FOTY to help protect the Yampa River.
Melanie Kilpatrick, Vice President and Secretary
Melanie serves the City of Craig as the executive assistant to the city manager, grants administrator, and as the project manager for the Yampa River Corridor Project, of which the vision is to create a cohesive park system along the Yampa River just south of Craig. Melanie represents the City of Craig on the board and steering committee of the Yampa River Fund. She has a B.S. in business management with a background in marketing and the creative arts. A native to the Yampa Valley, Melanie has a genuine passion for Northwest Colorado, river recreation/stewardship and adventuring with her partner, Nate, and daughter Hannah.
“I will lead you to a river so you can remember how beautiful it feels to be moved by something out of your control.”
— Emery Allen
Jennifer Wellman, Treasurer
In 2019, Jennifer returned to her home state of Colorado and the Yampa Valley to work for The Nature Conservancy as a Freshwater Technical Project Manager. Her love of and commitment to locally-driven watershed management has taken her to Nepal, Wyoming, and New Mexico through her continued work at the confluence of water, culture, climate, and community. The Upper Colorado River watershed is a current focus of her work to improve irrigation practices, reconnect floodplains and rivers, and increase science communication and citizen engagement in agriculture, recreation, and environmental multi-benefit projects. She shares her time in the Yampa Valley with her husband and a frisbee-obsessed Border Collie and loves to ride bikes, hike mountains, float rivers, and explore all corners of the West and beyond. She obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and attended Colorado State University and the University of Wyoming for her master’s with the Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics. In addition to the honor of joining FOTY in 2021, she fulfilled a dream of floating Yampa Canyon in Dinosaur National Monument with several colleagues and friends which reinforced her commitment to the protection of wild lands and rivers.
Board Members
John St. John
John caught the river bug growing up in Memphis on the Mississippi River. He grew up canoeing on the rivers in the Ozarks, and white water rafting in the Smokies. After high school he migrated west to Hoback Junction, Wyoming, where he guided whitewater and fishing trips for many seasons on the Snake River. John considers himself lucky to live with his family in Steamboat Springs where he founded a very small company that manufactures the World’s only roto-molded drift boat and skiff. He loves riding on the Yampa River in one of their Hog Island boats! John is a firm believer that people who enjoy rivers, and the outdoors are natural advocates for conservation. The Yampa is our local river, and one worth protecting her clean cool water for future generations.
Jackie Brown
Jackie Brown has called the Yampa Valley home for over thirty years, currently raising her teenage son and two dogs in Steamboat Springs. She came to working and playing in rivers after a Grand Canyon trip in 1999, spending her career thus far on Western water projects and policy for over 15 years, serving on and chairing many boards and commissions in that time. Jackie’s favorite river trip is Yampa Canyon through the monument, but there is nothing like watching Mikey Amato flip consecutively in both C and D hole in the spring, either.
Gary Kennedy
Gary and his wife, Michele Valdez, moved to Steamboat in 2019. He spent the bulk of his career in Dallas at American Airlines. Gary served as senior vice president and chief legal counsel during the challenging years following the events of 9/11. After retiring from the airline, he wrote a book about the airline industry, Twelve Years of Turbulence, and currently serves on the board of a financial services company. Gary grew up in Utah as an avid outdoor enthusiast and is excited to be back in the mountain west. He loves to hike, ski and play tennis, but his real passion is fly fishing. Gary finds great joy in the peace and solitude of standing in a river casting to browns and rainbows. As FOTY expands its reach as an organization, Gary hopes to leverage his background and business experience to help protect the Yampa for future generations.
Nicole Seltzer
Nicole lives in Oak Creek with her family and their various river toys including a whitewater dory, a raft, a shredder, two fish cats, two kayaks, and more inner tubes than she can use. She’s been an avid whitewater boater since a friend threw her in a paddle boat on a Westwater trip in 2006. She’s made rivers the centerpiece of her career, and she currently provides support, capacity, and coordination to conservation groups’ efforts to enact the policies and strategies needed for a climate-resilient Colorado River. Her deep knowledge of Western water and river issues comes from twenty years of stakeholder relations, communications, nonprofit leadership, and network management in Colorado and the West. She plans to use her skills to strengthen the influence and effectiveness of Friends of the Yampa through creating community and fostering effective collaboration.
Travis Crooke
Travis has called the Yampa Valley home for over 20 years. He has always been drawn to rivers, and the Yampa is no exception. His life generally revolves around the seasonality of the Yampa, whether it’s skiing the slopes that feed it, paddleboarding, or float and wade-fishing it in search of big browns. As a real estate agent, he is passionate about balancing the inevitable development of the Yampa Valley with the conservation of the river that draws people here in the first place.
In Memorium — Peter Van De Carr
You’ve probably seen Peter on skis, mountain bikes, kayaks, rafts, and in the local outdoor gear shop he has owned since 1986, Backdoor Sports. Peter has served on many Boards in the Steamboat Springs Community over the years. He was a founding member of the Northwest Rivers Alliance (est 1980) which later became Friends of the Yampa, President of Friends of the Yampa (1987 to 2009), Rocky Mountain Youth Corps Board (1998-2004), Yampa River System Legacy Partnership (2001 to present), State Water Supply Initiative (2002-2004), and the Steamboat Springs Parks and Rec Commission (1996 to 2004). Pete is an avid backcountry skier, mountain biker, and he has kayaked throughout North America, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Equador and Peru. He has had rock and Ice climbing adventures throughout North America, Argentina, and Peru. And he takes on the adventure of coaching youth sports in Steamboat – hockey, baseball, football, and skiing. He and his wife, Gretchen, play in a band together and raise their two boys, Otis and Oliver to love the outdoors.
In Memorium — Jonathan Stauffer
Jonathan was a FOTY Board Member, until his death in December 2016. He had been involved in river, wetland, and watershed restoration for over 20 years and his work spanned private fisheries habitat enhancement to large-scale mine reclamation, and the consulting, construction, and regulatory arenas. He owned a natural resource consulting and construction company that was based out of Steamboat Springs. Jonathan was an enthusiastic and valuable asset to Friends of the Yampa. He will be greatly missed.
Get involved!
Join us! Come to the Friends of the Yampa board of directors and subcommittee meetings or reach out to us directly at info@friendsoftheyampa.com.
Staff
Lindsey Marlow, Executive Director
Lindsey comes from an environmental and hydrology background and with her eclectic mix of experience and education, brings an environmental vigor that is an asset to the FOTY. She has experience with environmental policy and response as an environmental regulator through the US Coast Guard (in which she is still in the Reserves) including environmental outreach and stream surveying, studies in hydrology, ecology, environmental science, outdoor education and administration, as well as film and media relations. Lindsey enjoys a variety of outdoor activities and just being in the elements. Lindsey grew up playing in the Colorado River and developed a preference for inland waters despite growing in San Diego. She has focused her life on environmental stewardship and immersion and is excited to be a voice for the Yampa River. Steamboat Pilot article
Jenny Frithsen, Environmental Program Manager
Jenny’s love of forests and rivers began on and around the Pamlico River in North Carolina. She graduated with a degree in biology and chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and immediately moved west! She has worked for the Oregon State University Extension Office, Routt National Forest, Yampatika, Keystone Science School, and most recently as a high school teacher of biology and environmental science here in Steamboat Springs. Along the way, she earned her Master of Arts in education from Colorado Mesa University, and discovered a passion for the history, management, and ecology of the Colorado River and its tributaries, namely the mighty Yampa! Jenny is an avid reader of both fiction and nonfiction, loves camping on the river with her husband, Craig, and sons Connor and Angus, and finds time whenever she can to hike, bike, and ski with family and friends.
Katie Berning, Outreach Program Manager
Katie Berning moved to the Yampa Valley from North Dakota in 2015 after visiting close friends in Steamboat Springs. Her work over the years with the Steamboat Pilot & Today helped strengthen her growing interest in the complex history and issues of this area, as well as steer her to volunteer at many nonprofits. It was on a staff trip with the Pilot & Today that Katie first stepped foot on a raft after only experiencing kayaks, canoes and tubing behind a boat in the Midwest. Floating on the Colorado River that day sparked a her passion with water: how to read it, where it comes from, who has the rights to it and where it ends up. When not in a PFD, Katie can be found skiing, ski touring, mountain biking, backpacking, hiking and hanging in a hammock. She has two cats and more houseplants than most to make her home in Hayden the perfect place to settle down and grow her own roots in the Yampa Valley. Katie studied graphic design with a minor in women’s studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Emily Burke, Conservation Program Manager
Emily grew up in northern Michigan and graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in evolutionary anthropology and biology. After college, she worked on various wildlife research projects, including stints with critically endangered lemurs in the Madagascar rainforest, coyotes and kit foxes in the Utah desert, and bottlenose dolphins along the Mississippi coast. Emily holds a Master of Science in environmental education from Southern Oregon University, during which she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow for her work on habitat differences between invasive barred owls and native great gray owls in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Since finishing her masters, she has worked at several schools and environmental nonprofits in Oregon, California, and Michigan, most recently as the conservation director for a river-based nonprofit in northern Michigan called Grass River Natural Area. Emily is deeply passionate about protecting and adventuring in wild places; in 2015 and 2022, she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in two large chunks, and can often be found backpacking, kayaking, and hiking. Emily moved to the Yampa Valley in 2023, and she is thrilled to call protecting the Yampa her daily work.
Rebecca Hext, Development Program Manager
Born and raised in Southern California, Rebecca traded in her saltwater lifestyle for freshwater fun in 2019 when she relocated to Steamboat Springs. A proud alumna of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she holds a BS in English and creative writing. With five years of dedicated experience in nonprofit fundraising and development in the Yampa Valley, Rebecca's passion for environmental sustainability led her to join Friends of the Yampa as their development manager; aligning her personal values with her professional aspirations.
Rebecca is an active member of the Steamboat community, serving on the Parks and Recreation Commission and contributing her expertise as a part-time event planner with Heavenly Days Events. When she's not working, Rebecca embraces the great outdoors, whether it's trail running with her dog, Juniper; mountain biking with her partner Patrick; or rafting down the Yampa River with friends!
Jeremy Bailey, Program and Office Assistant
Jeremy grew up playing in the Darby creek that ran through the family farm in central Ohio. After earning a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from The Ohio State University, he served four years of active duty in the U.S. Army as an Environmental Science Officer and then the next two decades as a software engineer for several IT companies. In July of 2024, he joined FOTY as a part-time program & office assistant in Steamboat Springs, CO. When not behind a desk, he and his wife Marla can be found rafting, backcountry skiing, biking, backpacking, hiking, or enjoying a tasty beer somewhere in the great outdoors.
Kent Vertrees, Recreation and Education Coordinator
Arianna Roupinian, Outdoor Programs Logistic Technician
Mike Robertson, Yampa River Fund Manager