Ruthanne Buck attended her first four Family Nature Summits with her sisters and parents in the late 80’s and early 90’s. In 2022, she was lucky enough to provide her son, Joseph, the world-changing experience of attending a Family Nature Summit. Ruthanne leads a mission driven strategic consulting firm that works with organizations and companies that are striving to make equitable and positive change for a better world. During her career, she served in the Obama administration, worked with the American Federation of Teachers and has led major field and political operations on behalf of progressive issues, agencies and candidates, with a particular focus on education.

Ruthanne is passionate about the rights of all humans to live free, safe and proud. She was raised in Alexandria, Louisiana; educated at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; and lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Alan has been attending summits since before he was a teenager, and credits his lifelong love of the outdoors to the fun and educational experiences he had at the Summits. Alan works in marketing for Meta Platforms, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and son. Before joining Meta Platforms, Alan worked as a senior executive at a startup he helped build called Guidebook Inc., which provides technology to event organizers. He has also worked as a newspaper reporter for the LA Times Corp., and a press officer for the University of Rochester.

Sarah Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of Teaching Lab, a national nonprofit that serves over 10,000 teachers each year to shift the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity. From her roots as a high school science teacher, Sarah has held leadership roles with the Overdeck Family Foundation and the New York City Department of Education where she managed strategy for a 600-person division and oversaw policy for the city’s teacher development and evaluation system serving over 70,000 teachers. Sarah holds a Doctorate in Education Leadership from Harvard, an M.A.T. from American University, and a B.S. in Neuroscience from Emory University. Sarah lives in NYC, has an eight-year-old son and loves cooking, dancing, and studying educational research relevant to educators.

Matt Hayes has been driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore the natural world throughout his life. As a child, the great outdoors was his playground, and this love for nature led him to a B.S. in wildlife management from the University of Arizona. Matt spent 36 years as a science teacher in subjects such as Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Science. Post-retirement, Matt has channeled his passion for the outdoors into an encore career as a professional wildlife and nature photographer. He has been the photographer for the Antarctica Marathon for the past 12 years. Matt is deeply committed to conservation efforts and volunteers extensively for Colorado Parks and Wildlife in various capacities. He has worked as faculty with FNS for many years, leading programming from hiking to photography.

Sara Fuller has attended summits every year since 1996. She is an assistant professor of English and a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Technology. She credits the summits with life long friendships with people from all over the country and with a wealth of knowledge about our natural world which has come in handy more than once. She is passionate about diversity and accessibility and looks forward to working on initiatives addressing both within the FNS organization. 

Jim Davis is the Senior Manager of Sales Enablement at isolved, a leading HR Tech firm. With over a decade of B2B sales experience and multiple President’s Club awards, Jim now focuses on training and empowering their national field sales team. Outside of work, Jim’s creativity shines through his graphic design projects and his collection of nine murals painted for local schools. An avid sports fan and beach enthusiast, Jim enjoys spending time with his family—his wife Emily and their children, Poppy and Louie.

Leigh Ann attended her first Summit at nine years old.  Twenty Summits later she is very proud to be a member of the board and a long time teen leader within the organization.  Growing up in Summits gave her not only lifelong friendships and memories, but also the drive to care for the environment and all its flora and fauna.  Leigh Ann has lived in and around Chicago all her life and works in real estate with her husband Jake.  She has also been in hospitality for over twenty years, all while turning her passion for gardening and native plants into a small business. She was a long-time volunteer at a local wildlife shelter as an animal keeper and educational ambassador to the public and loves traveling, especially learning about different cultures and eating as much as she can along the way. Reveling in all that nature and the outdoors have to offer is her favorite hobby, mostly in the form of hiking, kayaking, and taking way too many pictures.  

Ralph began his career working in a few different fruit and vegetable stores in New York in the 70s, and eventually opened up his own store. After a few years, he began trucking produce from the market to different grocery stores on Long Island and made that into a lucrative business. One of the owners of the market hired him and he worked at the market for 28 years as a dock foreman and eventually an operations manager. After retiring in 2008, he went back to his start and drove trucks for the movie industry in NYC. He took his family to their first Summit in the late 80s and loved everything about it, especially the ending slideshow that allowed him and his family to relive all of the fun they had and friends they had made. After a long hiatus, Ralph came back last year, this time with his grandchildren, and loved it all over again. His grandchildren are dying to return, and he’s happy to be a member of the board to help shape what’s to come.