A Time of Change and Thanks
As with so many things in 2020, CPC’s board of trustees is experiencing change, with new leadership and several trustees stepping down as current terms end. Here we highlight the trustees who are changing roles or departing the board. We thank them most gratefully for their service to CPC and many contributions towards our goal to save plants.
Sharon Blackburn
The home that Sharon Blackburn built with her husband Randy is a LEED-certified sustainable building, and—perhaps more unusually—it boasts a midwestern prairie full of native plants as a front yard. Her family’s personal dedication to sustainability and passion for native plants is just one factor that made Sharon a natural fit for the CPC board. Although Sharon’s time on the CPC board has been shortened by life circumstances, fellow board member Spencer Crews points out that “her dedication to plant conservation was apparent in several aspects of her life.” Sharon was instrumental in bringing Lauritzen Gardens to CPC as a Participating Institution, working with her husband Randy (chair of the garden board) and Spencer (garden director at the time) to ensure they joined the network. She also served on national committees within the Garden Club of America as well as her local club. Sharon’s dedication to plant institutions demonstrates the impact an individual can make on protecting native plants and their environments.
Josephine Bush
Josephine (Jody) Bush joined the board at the invitation of her sister-in-law Patricia Bush, a founding board member, who thought she would love it. Patricia was correct. With CPC Jody found a “modest and humble [organization] with a huge vision and an achievable goal.” She loved the organization, believed in the mission, and loved being around those who also love the plant world. Jody noted that the field trips were a particular highlight of any board meeting, stating that “being in undisturbed natural areas is one of the greatest pleasures in life – one can sense sustainability and integration, the rightness of place.”
Though retiring from the board, Jody is not retiring her support of CPC. From her Florida home she hopes to raise awareness and funding support for plants, specifically the 356 rare and endangered plants found in Florida. She recently helped secure CPC’s first gift towards this effort, a generous donation from Coleman and Susan Burke and is excited to see the effort grow.
Mary Ann Streeter
Long-time CPC board member Mary Ann Streeter recalls stepping into the role decades ago, when the network headquarters were located in the attic of Arnold Arboretum. During her time on the board, she learned about many of the National Collections species and helped bring Kentucky lady’s slipper (Cypripedium kentuckiense) and other rare species into the collection. Looking back on her many years of service, Mary Ann reflects, “I got out a whole lot more [out of it] than I put into it.” She brought some of what she learned on the CPC board to enrich her contributions to the board of the New England Wild Flower Society (now Native Plant Trust). She ends her tenure on the CPC board with a fascination for all rare plants within the National Collection and a lasting impression of the amazing board members with whom she served.
Lynde Uihlein
While Lynde remains a trustee, she is stepping down from her time as board chair. Lynde took the reins of chair from Peter Raven in 2018. During this time, she led the board through changes in staff leadership and strategic planning and successfully addressed the many challenges of leading a non-profit. Our incoming Board Chair, Dr. Barbara Millen, had these wonderful things to say about Lynde:
Lynde, there are so many ways to describe you – environmentalist, social welfare advocate, feminist, philanthropist, political activist, innovator in community co-op development, and yes, even Wisconsin dairy farmer. Yet these labels provide only a glimpse into your many years of service, hard work, and extraordinary accomplishments. For those present at this Board meeting, I would like to underscore a few of your many strengths which I have come to know and admire so deeply in the two years we have worked closely together. You are a wise and clear, careful thinker — a visionary. You’re good-humored, steady, compassionate, thoughtful, measured in your recommendations, and considerate of those offered by others. You are so very generous and ever gracious. You are supremely level-headed, unless really pushed, and then you’re strong, tactical, and decisive. You are all these things, and they have made you the very great leader you have been at CPC. It is my great good fortune that we have become wonderful friends – thanks to CPC.
Lynde, you taught us all in the CPC family so much about non-profit organizational leadership and management. You are so wise and able to see the strengths, potential opportunities, and solutions in each moment – in the good times as well as when challenges arise. Who could have imagined the levels of success we have achieved and the unprecedented challenges we have faced in these past two years? You were exactly the person CPC needed to fill the very big shoes of Peter Raven – to provide the steady, guiding hand and Board leadership to facilitate and celebrate the enormous strides we’ve made under Joyce’s outstanding leadership and by her capable CPC team, and to weather difficult leadership transitions and daunting challenges brought on by COVID-19. Most Board Chairs, if lucky, have few disruptions to contend with in their terms. You have managed a tsunami of disruption with extraordinary strength, resolve, and skill. You have guided and inspired the Board, its XCOM, and our Headquarters team. We will be ever grateful for your wise, calm, and sound leadership and for your long list of accomplishments: a new 5-year strategic plan; the reinvigorated CPC-SDZG Management Committee; the ongoing MOU revisions; an active, transparent Executive Committee process; CPC By-Laws Revisions; Federal Conservation Advocacy and Legislative wins; sound CPC budgeting and interim as well as annual reporting practices, and ongoing efforts to streamline these processes; robust Board Guidelines, Policies and Procedures; revitalized Committee and Task Force structures; encouragement of the amazing Board participation in all areas of CPC governance, management, development, investments, and financial support; a robust pipeline of future Board candidates; strong Board support of the CPC Leadership and staff; a collegial, open tone and high level of communications between Board members and the CPC team; and even plans in the works for a 40th anniversary celebration! Certainly, these accomplishments required major Board and staff involvement, but none would have been possible without your capable and selfless leadership.
We are especially grateful that as you transfer the leadership role, you have poised CPC for a very bright future. We are also incredibly pleased that you have agreed to stay very close as a Member-at-Large, an XCOM member, and a representative on the CPC-SDZG Management team.
For all these things, I applaud you on behalf of our Board and express our sincerest thanks. Finally, let me say very personally that I consider the friendship we have evolved during this process a very cherished gift. Thank you ever so much.