ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE

ACAT is governed by a volunteer board with three of the eight members living in Anchorage and the other half in communities throughout Alaska. Quarterly board meetings and board committee meetings are conducted by teleconference, with a face-to-face meeting for the entire board and staff conducted annually in a retreat setting. The board and staff members of ACAT avoid a hierarchical structure, preferring to work together as colleagues who form consensus whenever possible. ACAT has developed a shared leadership approach; the Executive Director shares responsibilities with the Development Director and the Environmental Justice Program Director. Staff members meet weekly in “harmony meetings” to share food and discuss plans, successes, and challenges; and board members join the staff each month for the harmony meetings in person or by teleconference. The executive director meets individually on an ad hoc basis with staff members to discuss strategies for specific programmatic actions. The executive director supervises the work of all of the Anchorage staff members directly and meets annually with each person to facilitate mutual evaluations, encouraging both staff members to recognize their accomplishments and challenges.

Board Members

The following is a list of ACAT’s governing board members in alphabetical order:

Janet Daniels, Co-Chair, is an Athabascan grandmother with ten years of experience working for the U.S. Postal Service. She served as a community outreach worker, and volunteer for the Chickaloon Village (near Anchorage), the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Alaska Center for the Environment. Janet has been a member of a variety of boards for environmental organizations, including Alaska Trailside Discovery, and the Alaska Conservation Alliance. She worked for a year as Education and Outreach Coordinator for ACAT before she resigned and subsequently agreed to become a board member (2001). In 2004, Janet Spoke about ACAT and military toxics on the international Peace Boat.

Pauline Kohler, Co-Chair founding board member, is a Yupik Eskimo who lives in the Village of Aleknagik located in Western Alaska near the Bering Sea coast. Through her family’s concerns, she helped initiate a toxics project about the impacts of mercury and fuel contamination from mining along the Wood River near her home. She represented ACAT in a mining conference held for non-governmental organizations in the western United States. She serves as a clerk for the village of Aleknagik.

Birgit Lenger, N.D. is a European-Canadian originally from Vancouver (British Columbia) Canada. She moved to Seattle in 1997 to attend Bastyr University, where she received her doctorate in naturopathic medicine in 2001. Her speciality is Family Medicine. She practices in Anchorage at the Natural Health Center, is active in outdoor sports, and volunteers frequently for ACAT activities— testifying at hearings, participating in panel discussions about the effects of toxic materials on the health of people, and representing ACAT at environmental health meetings such as the November 2005 conference in New York of the Coming Clean Network. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004 and serves on ACAT’s Fundraising Committee.

Kimberly Martus, Secretary, is a Cahuilla Indian (Southern California) who came to Alaska when she married an Inupiat Eskimo. She is an attorney and currently lives in Sitka where she works for the Sitka Tribe. Before that she lived in Anchorage and served as Tribal Judge for the Native Village of Barrow. She is a consultant to the National Tribal Environmental Council. In the past she was the Director of the statewide Alaska Tribal CASA Program (Court Appointed Special Advocates), a consultant for child advocacy, tribal court development consultant, and Professor at the School of Justice for the University of Alaska in Anchorage. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.

Harriet Penayah, Elder, was born in 1932 in the Yupik Village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (Bering Sea, west of Nome, sixty miles from Siberia). She was a health aide for twenty-eight years. She loves music and dancing, and taught herself to play the piano. She started playing for the Presbyterian Church in 1950 where she is a Sunday School teacher. In 1989 when her son passed away, Harriet taught herself to play the guitar by remembering the way her son had played. She teaches children how to Eskimo dance, including ACAT’s director Pam Miller. Harriet attends meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board for the Northeast Cape abandoned military site, expressing her concerns about the health problems she has seen as a former health aide on St. Lawrence Island. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.

Kathleen Peters-Zuray, Treasurer, is an Athabascan Indian and the Tribal Environmental Coordinator for the Native Village of Tanana, which is located in the Interior of Alaska. She assisted the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council with its Yukon River Unified Watershed Assessment (June 2002). Kathleen attended the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council in Baltimore (December 2002), and before that she studied with the Rural Human Service Program. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.

Patti J. Saunders is a European-American who graduated from New York University School of Law in 1980. She practiced law in Pittsburgh before coming to Anchorage in 1986 to serve as staff attorney for Trustees for Alaska. She has been involved continuously with the conservation community in Alaska as an activist, administrator, volunteer, or board member for a variety of non-governmental organizations. Since 1999 she has been serving as Development Director for The Arc of Anchorage (a service organization for the developmentally disabled), where she is responsible for fundraising and marketing. Patti joined the ACAT board in February 2004 and serves on ACAT’s Fundraising Committee. Patti works in both communities to raise awareness about the connection between exposures of parents to environmental contaminants and developmental disabilities in their children.

Violet Yeaton is a Supiaq Aleut, and she serves as the Tribal Environmental Coordinator of the Native Village of Port Graham located on the Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska. She has been involved with ACAT since 2000, traveling with ACAT staff to Washington D.C. and a United Nations meeting in South Africa to represent the concerns of her people about persistent organic pollutants that are contaminating the traditional foods in Alaska. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004. In August 2005, Violet hosted the biannual meeting of ACAT’s board and staff at Port Graham.