Sustainable Tompkins is governed by a Board of Directors and supported by staff and volunteers.
Board of Directors
Tom Shelley, Chair
Neil Schill, Secretary
Osamu Tsuda, Treasurer
Cathleen Banford
Roger Beck
Jessica Swindon
Gay Nicholson, President (ex officio)
Staff Support
Gay Nicholson, President & CEO
Marisa Lansing, Climate Fund Coordinator
Sasha Paris, Mini-Grant Coordinator & Office Assistant
Alexis Fallon, Sustainable Finger Lakes Program Assistant
Maggie Mowrer, Clean Energy Intern
Nancy Robbins, Bookkeeper
Board and Staff Bios
Gay Nicholson, President
Since 2004, Gay Nicholson has led Sustainable Tompkins in designing and implementing an integrated program to advance the creation of a more sustainable regional community. Gay emphasizes a systems approach to working with partners to build the infrastructure and social capacity for more sustainable ways of living and working. Gay participates in a number of local partnerships related to energy and climate, equity as an economic driver, and sustainable agriculture.
Gay left a career in sustainable agriculture to work in environmental advocacy and education with Cornell’s Program on Ethics and Public Life, and as executive director of the Finger Lakes Land Trust before leading the creation of Sustainable Tompkins. She has been an active volunteer in numerous community and environmental organizations, providing leadership from the local to the national level.
Gay’s undergraduate degree (with High Distinction) is in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia (1979), and her Master’s (1982) and Doctorate (1991) are in Crop Physiology and Integrated Pest Management from Cornell University. She currently serves on the boards of HeatSmart Tompkins and the Tompkins County Planning Advisory Board.
Thomas Shelley, Chair
Thomas Shelley attended Bowling Green University (Ohio) majoring in geology and chemistry. Most of Tom’s early working career was as a chemist doing analytical work in industrial labs. He worked at Cornell University Environmental Health and Safety for 13.5 years, and held the position of Chemical Hygiene Officer for the last nine years of his career there. Tom then worked part time for Cornell University Environmental Health and Safety and held other consulting and training positions for four years before his full retirement at the end of 2007.
In the ensuing years, Tom has become increasingly involved in the sustainability movement in Ithaca and Tompkins County. He volunteers in various capacities for 12 different sustainability-related organizations including the Board of Directors of Sustainable Tompkins.
Neil Schill, Secretary
Osamu Tsuda, Treasurer
Originally from Cooperstown NY, Osamu does work around climate resiliency and adaptation planning in the Southern Tier region spanning from Steuben to Delaware County.
As a graduate from Cornell’s city planning program, Osamu is very interested in the topics of watershed management and land use planning, which is how he got acquainted with Sustainable Tompkins in 2018.
As part of the ST board of directors, Osamu looks forward to working with communities to prepare for the effects of climate change and help create a more sustainable future.
Cathleen Banford
Roger Beck
Roger Beck grew up on a dairy farm in the Town of Dryden and graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Agricultural Engineering. After serving two years in the Navy Seabees, he started Beck Construction, a company doing excavation and grading work.
During the following decades, this company changed its operations and it is now Beck Equipment, located in Preble, NY. Beck Equipment rents, sells and services construction machinery and employs twenty-five people.
Over the years, Roger has worked to get information to the public about a wide variety of issues. To continue these efforts, he is starting a not-for-profit called 21st Century Facts. Roger serves on the board of Sustainable Tompkins and is a member of the Ithaca Sunrise Rotary.
Jessica Swindon
Jessica Swindon grew up in Syracuse, NY next to Onondaga Lake (the most polluted lake in America) which evoked her deep appreciation of the Finger Lakes region. She holds a B.Sc from SUNY Cortland and an M.Sc from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies where her work focused on carbon and nitrogen cycling in rangelands. She currently manages a soil and plant ecology lab that focuses on sustainable agriculture in the School of Integrative Plant Sciences at Cornell University.
Jessica’s work with Sustainable Tompkins focuses on land and resource management including harmful algal bloom education and prevention and carbon offset projects with a focus in agriculture. Jessica is often at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market selling locally made CBD and spends the rest of her time with her dog Ruby.
Marisa Lansing, Climate Fund Program Coordinator
Marisa Lansing is a mover and a shaker through her climate and social justice work in Tompkins County. She is a dedicated community worker and founder of the local, youth-led climate activism group, Sunrise Ithaca! Through the Sunrise Movement, she helped organize young people to advocate for the passing of a Green New Deal in the City of Ithaca — collaborating with the city to explicitly commit to building resilience within vulnerable communities as we rapidly decarbonize. She graduated from Ithaca College in May of 2019, with a degree and wild passion for Environmental Studies.
Marisa acknowledges the deep systemic changes required to tackle the global issue of climate disruption, but also sees that big change starts at the local and regional levels. She puts her activism into practice as Program Coordinator of the Finger Lakes Climate Fund (first getting involved with Sustainable Tompkins through her NYSERDA Clean Energy internship in summer of 2019). Marisa values the climate justice and Green New Deal solutions deeply embedded in this program — empowering local frontline communities with economic resources, boosted health impacts, and accessible, clean energy in the face of climate emergency, supported by this local, clear, wealth distribution project.
Sasha Paris, Mini-Grant Program Coordinator and Office Assistant
Sasha Paris grew up in Ithaca and graduated from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, with an interdisciplinary blend of studies in human-environmental interactions. Her career has focused on nature education – former workplaces include Acadia National Park, the New England Aquarium, and the Finger Lakes National Forest – and supporting others’ endeavors to strengthen communities and protect the living world.
She has volunteered with Sustainable Tompkins since 2012, assisting with public outreach and administration of the Neighborhood Mini-grant program, and joined the staff in 2014 as the program’s coordinator.
She currently volunteers with numerous local organizations, including Loaves and Fishes, the Ithaca Children’s Garden, and the Paleontological Research Institution’s Museum of the Earth.
Nancy Robbins, Bookkeeper
Nancy graduated from the U. of Michigan with a Bachelor of Music degree with high distinction. She plays violin, viola and soprano, tenor and bass viol. When the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, which she played in, needed a treasurer she began taking accounting classes at TC3. She took all the accounting they offered and some math too, for fun. She was financial manager at Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services for fourteen years, and since has worked for various other non-profits, and has been treasurer for many others including the Finger Lakes Land Trust. She became the bookkeeper for Sustainable Tompkins in 2009.
Nancy is the mother of two daughters, and grandmother of two boys. The boys grew up in Indonesia and Brunei, and the oldest is now an undergraduate at Northwestern University studying economics. The youngest is a budding cellist and they both love to play tennis and soccer. We are very proud of them!
Maggie Mowrer, Clean Energy Intern
With a passion for environmental justice and effective communications programs, Maggie recently joined the Sustainable Tompkins community after graduating in May 2020 from Ithaca College. Throughout her time in college, her studies were concentrated primarily on marketing, but her free time was committed to volunteering with EcoReps, Tompkins CRT, the ReUse centers, and various other organizations that focused on social justice.
At Sustainable Tompkins, she endeavors to bring a keen eye for design and compelling copy to a slew of campaigns centered around one of the most important issues we all face – the climate crisis. She can also be found helping Marisa with whatever Sunrise Ithaca needs in terms of graphic design.
