Getting on Board

Dedicated volunteers on both our Board of Trustees and Advisory Board provide needed guidance and perspectives on all aspects of our operations. These new members have long-standing ties to the Adirondacks and The Wild Center.

LEE BAILEY

Trustee

In the 1990s, Lee Bailey worked for a company that provided the batteries for General Motors’ EV1, the first massproduced modern electric car. “We had a demonstration house with solar panels on the roof and an EV1 outside, and we said, ‘This is the future,’” says Bailey, a financier involved today with several clean-energy projects.

Thirty years later, the future has taken longer to arrive than he expected. But it’s getting here. “I think people are increasingly aware of the challenges posed by climate change,” says Bailey, a St. Lawrence University alumnus who has been visiting the Adirondacks since he was 7. And while people are sometimes slow to take the necessary steps, he says places like The Wild Center can convince people to act.

DAVE FADDEN

Trustee

When storyteller and artist David Fadden worked with The Wild Center on our Ways of Knowing exhibit, he was eager for visitors to see a Native American perspective on nature and the environment. But he wasn’t sure whether it would connect.

“You do speeches, you go home, but often you don’t hear if you’ve affected people or not,” says Fadden, who operates the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center in Onchiota with his father and brother. Soon after the exhibit opened, he heard from somebody who was skeptical an Indigenous perspective could fit in a science museum. But that person came around. “Through the process of education, this person got very emotional,” he said. “We opened their eyes to a new way of looking at the world.”

ROBIN GOSNELL

Advisory Board

Robin Gosnell practiced tax law full-time for five years before working part-time as a lawyer and administrator for a boutique investment firm in Princeton, N.J. Now retired, she sits on the boards of Princeton Day School and Trinity Counseling Service, and serves several other non-profits as well. She has a second home on Upper Saranac Lake, where she has spent almost every summer since she was an infant.

GRANT REYNOLDS

Advisory Board

Grant Reynolds was raised in Lake Placid but has since lived and worked around the world. He moved back to New York City in 2012 and is founder of Parcelle, an online wine dealer. Reynolds co-authored his first book, “How to Drink Wine,” in 2020; he has been a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and was named Best New Sommelier by Wine & Spirits magazine in 2013. He has been featured in Condé Nast Traveler and Vogue, and has written about wine and restaurant culture for Vanity Fair and GQ.

ANNA SOMMER

Advisory Board

Anna Sommer is a principal of Energy Futures Group, a firm seeking to transform our energy system to one that is clean, efficient, renewable, safe, affordable and equitable. Her work, which involves modeling and critiquing utility scale power systems, requires her to testify before public utility commissions around the country. She lives in Canton, N.Y., with her husband and two children.