Welcome to staff profiles! Here we will post monthly profiles of the staff in the Maryland Sierra Club!
First up is Laurel Imlay, our Chapter Coordinator!
Name: Kathleen Laurel Imlay
Position: Sierra Club Maryland Chapter Coordinator
Office: MD Chapter Office in College Park
Hometown: Hyattsville, MD
When did you start at Sierra Club? Laurel started working with the MD Chapter in 1998
Primary Campaigns/Responsibilities: Laurel’s projects change over time. Currently she coordinates the Chapter’s e-communications calendar and newsletter, runs the internship program, helps local Sierra Club MD Groups get resources and supports the Get Outdoors program. She also performs administrative tasks to help support the club's operations.
Interests/Hobbies: Loves weeding invasive alien plants from her yard and eating garlic mustard, swimming, boating, dancing, reading, baking bread, sewing, playing games, climbing mountains, picking raspberries, washing dishes, talking to you while she’s riding her bike to work, playing recorder and practicing yoga.
Why you love the environment / What issue are you most passionate about? Saving trees, zero waste & composting, Laurel strongly supports Sierra Club’s mission to get people outdoors, enjoying, learning and connecting with nature. She wants to build our community and the movement to protect the planet for our families and our future.
Anything else you’d like to share? Laurel was born in Takoma Park and grew up in Chicago and Duluth Minnesota. As a child she dug in the mud and appreciated nature with her artist mother and invertebrate biologist father who specialized in freshwater mussels and land snails. Her Chinese grandparents immigrated in the 1930’s and had a restaurant in Baltimore across from Lexington Market. Her paleontologist grandfather descended from German Scottish 1600 arrivals, worked for the Smithsonian Geological Survey discovering oil in Mexico and Alaska and took his kids and then his granddaughter collecting fossils out west. During college she earned a Biochemistry degree at the University of Maryland, ran the MD Food Co-op with the collective workers, managed the student run recycling center, and worked at plant tissue culture and human nutrition labs at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
After College, Laurel sailed across the Pacific, coming back 4 years later having seen how people live outside the US and with a strengthened passion to effect positive change for the planet.
She has two sons. One learned to feel at home in the woods by attending Ancestral Knowledge summer camps. The other gained a similar appreciation for the natural world with his grandfather exploring Chapman Forest woods in the Mattawoman Watershed of Charles County.
Next up is our Chapter Director, Josh Tulkin!
Name: Josh Tulkin
Position: Chapter Director
Office: MD Chapter Office in College Park
Primary Campaigns/Responsibilities: Oversee all campaigns, electoral and political work
Hometown: Oakland, CA
Interests/Hobbies: gardening, mushroom foraging, ultimate frisbee, playing guitar, tinkering with anything.
Why you love the environment / What issue are you most passionate about? I am most passionate about engaging more people in the great work of protecting our planet, which is why I love working at the Sierra Club. I believe the power to protect everyone we love lies in our ability to get everyone to stand up and fight, together. The issue that got me personally involved, was climate change. When I was 26, I made a commitment to dedicate 10 years of my life to fighting climate change. I barely noticed when I crossed that milestones, because I’m clearly in it for the long-haul. I am also passionate about making Sierra Club Maryland Chapter 100% supported by our members, to keep us connected with the people that we work for. So don’t forget to donate! Growing up on the West Coast, I have always had a special place in my heart for the oceans and deserts. There is something about staring out into the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean or the deserts of Joshua Tree National Park that grounds me and reminds me how wondrous life can be.
Check back here in late October for a profile of our Policy Director, David Smedick!