Dr. Stephen W. Kress
Director

Stephen Kress is Director of the Seabird Restoration Program and Vice president for Bird Conservation of the National Audubon Society. He received his B. S. in Zoology and M.S. in Wildlife Management from Ohio State University and his Ph.D. in Environmental Education from Cornell University. Steve began Project Puffin in 1973 and has remained its Director since the beginning. He is also Manager of National Audubon's Maine Coastal Island Sanctuaries. He was Ornithology Instructor at the Audubon Camp in Maine on Hog Island from 1969 through 1981, and Director of the Camp from 1982 through 1986. He is a Laboratory Associate at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY.

 

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Rosalie Borzik
Associate Director

Rose Borzik is the Associate Director of the Seabird Restoration Program. She is responsible for all logistics and finances at both the Ithaca office and the Audubon Base in Bremen, and she also creates and maintains the summer staff schedule. She has a B.Sc. in Animal Science from Cornell University, and is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, specializing in raptors. She maintains a turkey vulture and two red-tailed hawks who function as "wildlife ambassadors" and accompany her to educational presentations given to groups ranging in age from pre-school through adult. She also knows the value of a good antique and good food on the research islands.

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Deborah J. Wood
Financial/Development Administrator

Debbie Wood from Freeville, NY is the Financial/Development Administrator for Project Puffin and the Seabird Restoration Program. Debbie is responsible for all the financial income and payables that are received for Project Puffin and are recorded in the Puffin Donor Database program. In addition, Debbie assists Rose Borzik and Steve Kress with office management and development. Previously, Debbie worked for 14 years with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the Bookshop and also in the Slide Department. Debbie has an AA degree in Primary School Education, and taught kindergarten and 2nd grade for 2 years until she gave it up to have her own family. She also has a minor in secretarial and computer science. Deb has been working with Steve and Rose on Project Puffin since 1999. Outside interests including sewing, and spending time with her husband George and her two children - daughter Kelly & her husband Brian, and son Justin & his wife Jennifer, and grandson Aiden. She also enjoys stock car racing, and watching the Yankees win over the RED SOX.

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Ruth Likowski
Annual Giving Manager

Ruth Likowski is the Annual Giving Manager for Project Puffin. She joined the Project in 1997. She holds a BS degree in Business Administration/Marketing from Penn State University. She enjoys collecting antiques and collectible advertising, and dabbles in the online auction world in her spare time.

 

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Scott Hall
Research Coordinator

Scott Hall is the Research Coordinator for the National Audubon Society's Seabird Restoration Program (SRP). Scott received his MSc Wildlife Conservation from UMASS-Amherst. Thesis work was on the feeding ecology of Maine coast terns. His current research interests include Common Tern foraging and reproductive performance; Roseate Tern biology; Passerine migration; Mercury exposure in Maine waterbirds; and Nesting habitat partitioning by breeding alcids. Scott has worked with seabirds, passerines, and marine mammals at sites in Hawaii and Alaska. His first field experience was as a biologist for the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, where he ran a bird banding station and worked with Peregrine Falcons, Common Terns, and Common Loons. Scott is the author of several journal articles and co-author (with Steve Kress) of the Tern Management Handbook: Coastal Northeastern US and Atlantic Canada. He also serves on the board of Friends of Maine Seabird Islands, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation and appreciation of seabirds in Maine. Scott lives in Belfast, ME with his family: Amy, Caleb, and Phoebe, and their dogs Cricket and Tipper. He is a telemark skier and road/mtn/cross biker and likes to bird, garden, hang with friends, listen to the Sox, and be with his family during down time.

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Pete Salmansohn
Education Coordinator

Pete Salmansohn received his M.S. in Teaching from the Environmental Studies Department at Antioch/New England and his M.S. in Social Ecology from Goddard College. He has instructed adults at the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine for nine summers, children for seventeen seasons, and still teaches at the family camp and during special education weeks. Pete is the Education Coordinator for the Seabird Restoration Program and helps "Seabird Sue" Schubel coordinate the school outreach program. Pete gives lectures about the Seabird Restoration Program, and narrates the Audubon seabird tours aboard commercial boats. He is co-author with Steve Kress of two books about the Project: Project Puffin, and Giving Back To The Earth, and has most recently written a new book with Steve Kress, called Saving Birds: Heroes Around the World. In 1998 the Maine Environmental Education Association named Pete as the Environmental Educator of the Year.

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Susan Schubel
Outreach Instructor

"Seabird Sue" Schubel is Project Puffin's own Disney Hero, and has been the Outreach Educator for Project Puffin since 2000. She loves to engage her students (usually elementary school age) in exciting learning activities and share real data from the seabird islands with them. Her acquaintance with Project Puffin began in high school, when she saw Marlin Perkins rowing ashore with Steve on Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom". By strange coincidence her Ornithology professor at UNH knew the Project well, and directed her to the Audubon Camp at Hog Island. She first volunteered as a research assistant on Matinicus Rock in 1984, and since then has spent many summers on Maine seabird islands, in addition to seabird stints in California and Galapagos. Her current summer island base is as a caretaker for Maine Audubon's Hog Island Audubon Center, where much of the wildlife is human, but she keeps her hand in the seabird restoration business by supplying sound attraction equipment to projects from Bermuda to Hawaii, and Quebec to Baja. Sue loves islands and beasts, and recently acquired a dog with very familiar little black triangles over its eyes.

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André Breton
Database Manager

André Breton encountered Project Puffin in 1993 when he went to work for the the National Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine (now operated by Maine Audubon). Two years later, thanks to the encouragement of Rose Borzik and Pete Salmansohn, he was headed for Matinicus Rock and then Seal Island as a Project Puffin Intern. The following year André supervised Eastern Egg Rock and continued in this role (eventually switching to Seal Island) for six years. Along the way, André became interested in graduate school, met Tony Diamond from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, and ultimately joined his lab in the fall of 2000. Although 2001 was his last complete summer with Project Puffin, he has never (or only briefly) gone off the payroll since 1995. After a winter stint in Ithaca working to put together a mark-recapture database for Atlantic Puffins (known today as Seabird Finder), André gradually developed skills in database management, Microsoft Access, and eventually, programming in Visual Basic 6. Today, and for the last four or five years, André has been using these skills to fulfill the role of Database Manager for Project Puffin.

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Susie Meadows
Manager, Project Puffin Visitor Center (PPVC)

Susie is the manager of the Project Puffin Visitor Center located in Rockland, Maine and by chance she met Steve Kress in the summer of 2006 and realized working at the Project Puffin Visitor Center would be a wonderful place where her birding and educational experience could collide. She attended Unity College in Unity Maine and graduated from Northland College in 1999 with a BS in Outdoor Education with an emphasis in Natural History. Between the years of 1996-1999 she worked in the ornithology field banding birds and nest searching and from 1999 to 2002 she worked at various environmental education centers teaching kids. In 2005 Susie received her teaching certification from Appalachian University and moved back up to Maine to start her teaching career. Susie lives in Union, ME with her husband and son, and enjoys being creative in her free time.

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Terry P. Mingle
Assistant to the Director
Webmaster

Terry Mingle began working part-time for Audubon in 2006. She helps to keep track of grants and contracts, and organizes the annual Contributor Trips each summer in Maine. She also created most of the content for the (new) web site. Before becoming a staff member for Project Puffin, Terry worked with Dr. Kress as a coordinator/event planner for his popular local birding course in Ithaca, NY. Terry received her BA in Music Merchandising (Music/Business/Marketing) from Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA. Her outside interests (besides birds, of course) include Chow Chow dogs, trains, downloading iTunes, working in radio, and singing and playing various instruments in band called Blue Monday. She even has an endorsement with iGuitar. She has worked at Cornell University full-time since 1988, and is currently the Academic Programs Coordinator/Graduate Field Assistant for the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis.

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Arthur Marchese
Office Assistant

Artie helps Project Puffin with whatever they need help with!

 

 

 

 

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Diane Tessaglia-Hymes
Graphic Designer

Diane has been creating graphic materials for the Seabird Restoration Program since 1991. She is responsible for the design and layout of most of the Project's printed materials, including CDs, DVDs, and the Egg Rock Update newsletter. Diane is also the Design Director for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and operates Green Heron Graphics, a freelance graphic-design business. She has been a birder for 30 years, but never saw a puffin until she became involved with Project Puffin. In her free time Diane is learning Japanese. She enjoys watching anime amd jdorama, cooking, and spending time with her husband and daughter.

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Dr. Gerald Urquhart
Web Consultant

Jerry is a Visiting Professor at Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University. He loves to share the things he knows with others, while learning from them as well. He believed that educational activities needed to extend beyond the walls of institutions and reach communities and societies everywhere, and he developed Project Puffin's original web site when the Internet was in its infancy, in order to demonstrate his commitment and interest in outreach education and to share information about puffins with the world. The project staff has since taken over Jerry's pages, and redesigned them, but they still look to him for web advice now and again.

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