FFI Inc. Board

Melissa Shackleton Dann

FFI Board Chair

Melissa Shackleton Dann has over twenty years experience in international environmental policy and program strategy.

For over twelve years, she was in private philanthropy with the Wallace Global Fund, serving as its Executive Director for three of those years. She developed all aspects of the Fund's environmental portfolio, including early engagement on climate change, commodity certification and reform of international financial and trade institutions. She spearheaded its first program related investment, raising the profile of using capital markets to drive environmental and social change within NGO and foundation communities.

Ms. Dann began her environmental career at the World Wildlife Fund and later directed programs for the US-Asia Environmental Partnership, a $100 million dollar Presidential initiative. She is a recognized leader in the environmental community as demonstrated through board memberships and leadership positions. She currently chairs the board of Fauna & Flora International US and is on the boards of RARE and Winrock International.

She serves on a number of advisory councils including the World Wildlife Fund-US National Council, Island Press, Calvert Foundation Green Initiative Advisory Council and the Global Fairness Initiative. Ms. Dann is a Fellow with the Royal Geographic Society. She holds a master's in political economy from Columbia University where she was an international fellow. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with her husband and their four children.

Clea Newman Soderlund

FFI Board Vice Chair

C. Jonathan Fischer

FFI Board Treasurer

Born and raised in Madison, Connecticut, Mr. Fischer currently resides in Southport, Connecticut and Miami Beach, Florida. He is a founding Partner of Stone Harbor Investment Partners, and for over twenty years has specialized in the Pension Industry.

He graduated with a degree in History from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1981, began his career as a consultant, and eventually headed the global sales effort for Gordon, Haskett & Company in Stamford, Connecticut. After representing Citigroup Asset Management as a Managing Director of Institutional Sales, he became a founding Partner of Stone Harbor Investment Partners.

His active interests include skiing, climbing, hiking, kayaking, and travel. He has climbed several notable peaks in Europe, North America, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Russia, New Zealand and Africa. His non-profit involvement has included participation with the efforts of The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, The Appalachian Mountain Club and the Susan B. Komen Foundation. Additionally, he sponsors a facility for homeless children in Medellin, Colombia.

Dorette Louise Fleischmann

FFI Board Secretary

Born June 15, 1931 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Julius and Dorette Kruse Fleischmann. Mrs. Fleischmann, known as "Dielle", is the greatgrandaughter of Charles Fleischmann, widely known founder of the Fleischmann Yeast Company in 1868, maker of compressed yeast who revolutionized the baking business in this country.

While her education took her to schools throughout Europe, Mrs. Fleischmann always nutured a love of farming, developed early on by her father, Julius, himself a self-sufficient farmer. Today, Mrs. Fleischmann oversees a thriving natural farming business, operating on land she purchased just outside Washington, D.C. Her interest in farming entwined itself with a love of the land, its flora and its wildlife.

She has devoted herself to many conservation activities including saving the last remaining tract of Bald Cypress Swamp in Low Country, South Carolina, as well as establishing a connection between conservationists in South and Central America and the National Audubon Society.

Mrs. Fleischmann has also been a member of the Board of Directors for The Wildfowl Trust, now the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, (Slimbridge, Gloucester, England), a U.S. representative of the World Wildlife Fund (Peru), a member of the Board of Advisors to South Carolina Wildlife and Marine Resources Commissioner, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Wilderness Leadership Foundation, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the U.S. National Arboretum. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of Fauna & Flora International since 2002.

Virginia M Busch

Virginia Busch grew up in St. Louis Missouri. As part of the Busch family she has always had a connection to wildlife and animals through the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Parks.

For eight years she served as Conservation Ambassador for SeaWorld and Busch Gardens as well as President of the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. In her role, she assisted in the planning and execution of the parks' expanding conservation programs, including development and oversight of partnerships to support collaborative research projects. She also served as media spokesperson for environmental efforts at the parks.

Virginia contributes to conservation and animal welfare at home and abroad as a National Council Member for World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Alliance International Advisory board member, National Geographic Society Council of Advisors member, a board member for Fauna & Flora International, the Humane Society of Missouri, the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and serves on several committees for the Saint Louis Zoo.

Marc J. Ebbin

Marc Ebbin is a principal in Ebbin Moser + Skaggs LLP, and specializes in legal and policy matters involving state and federal environmental and natural resources regulation. Mr. Ebbin's extensive background in these matters includes serving for nearly six years as Special Assistant to Secretary Bruce Babbitt of the U.S. Department of the Interior. He is known for his innovative approaches to addressing environmental challenges, such as the conservation of rare and endangered species, habitats, wetlands and watersheds.

He currently advises public and private clients throughout the West, including local, state and federal agencies; corporate and development interests; private landowners; agricultural operations; and land conservancies, on complex environmental and natural resource regulatory matters.

Mr. Ebbin received his legal degree from the University of Wisconsin (JD, cum laude, 1988) and served as an articles editor for the Wisconsin Law Review. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1983. Mr. Ebbin is a member of the State Bars of California and Wisconsin.

Thomas S. Foster

Tom Foster, founder of Quince Hill Partners, LLC, raises investment capital for institutional real estate investment firms in the United States, Europe and Asia.

In addition to serving on the Board of Fauna & Flora International, Tom is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Public Radio Foundation, Washington, DC.

He is an emeritus Board member of The Helen Hayes Awards and of the Contemporary American Theater Festival, Shepherdstown, WV. He is a member of the 2007 Class of Leadership Greater Washington. He resides in Hong Kong and Middleburg, Virginia.

Mr. Foster graduated from Duke University in 1976 with a B.A., magna cum laude, in economics. He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan in 1979.

Blaine T. Phillips

Mr. Phillips, married to Susan Phillips, of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and Easton, Maryland. He is retired head of Potter Anderson & Corroon, Delaware's oldest law firm; emeritus Chairman of Fair Play Foundation which makes diverse charitable grants, and of Mt. Cuba Center, a charitable organization dedicated to the study of Piedmont flora and the preservation of open space; he is also an active board member of a number of other organizations, like Fauna & Flora International, focusing on conservation of natural resources.

Mr. Phillips is an avid sportsman, directed mainly to worldwide trout and salmon angling, and to wing shooting along the Chesapeake Bay with his companion Labrador retrievers.

Mark Rose

Chief Executive Officer, Fauna & Flora International

Mark has been a Board member off FFI Inc. since 1994. As a trained zoologist, he spent the early part of his career as a wildlife officer and field biologist, specialising in the sustainable conservation management of wildlife, particularly crocodiles in Papua New Guinea. Mark has been at the helm of three Conservation Not for Profit organisations in the United Kingdom and is CEO of Fauna & Flora International since 1993, responsible for all the society's conservation operations across the world as well as for its financial and administrative management.

He is also a Board member of FFI Australia and of several local trusts and foundations in the Americas and Africa.

Beth Ruoff

Beth Ruoff is a managing director at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. A member of Ogilvy's Strategy & Planning team, Beth is integral to shaping communications strategies and programs for corporate, nonprofit and government clients. She has a particular expertise in awareness building and behavior change having spent over 20 years developing innovative programs that address such topics as heart disease, sexual health, education and environmental sustainability.

Beth was the creative force behind the National Institute of Health's campaign, The Heart Truth, also known as "The Red Dress Campaign," which made that garment an iconic symbol for women and heart disease. In addition, Beth has helped lead the development of Ogilvy's corporate responsibility (CR) offering, working closely with agency clients to develop CR strategies and surrounding marketing and communications programs.

She brings professional, real-world experience to Johns Hopkins University where she teaches a graduate course in corporate responsibility.

Beth is active in the nonprofit community—serving on several boards and providing branding and communications expertise to a diverse set of organizations. She holds a B.A. in graphic design from Pennsylvania State University and currently resides in Washington, DC.

Charles C. Savitt

Charles C. Savitt is President and Publisher of Island Press. He established Island Press in 1984 in order to provide those solving environmental problems with the latest scientific and multidisciplinary information. Today, Island Press is the leading environmental publisher in the U.S., with a wide range of books from technical and professional to scholarly.

Mr. Savitt serves as a director of the Tides Foundation, Fauna & Flora International, and the National Environmental Trust Action Fund. He received a B.A. in Community Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an M.P.A. from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Victoria Stack

Victoria is one of the early architects of Fauna & Flora International in the United States. As an original Board member, she has provided support and leadership for more than a decade, including serving as Board Secretary for many years.

As a respected patron of many conservation organizations, she has been an effective advocate, grantor, consultant, advisor and/or Board member on their behalf. In addition to Fauna & Flora International, these include: Rachel's Network, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Mercy Corps, the Sierra Club International Program and many more. While running her own non-profit organization, she was a delegation member of a U.S. State Department initiative concerning landmine eradication using trained canines. She subsequently helped establish a program on this issue which took her to countries such as Angola, Rwanda, Eritrea, Mozambique, Sweden and Canada.

She is an alumna of The Prince of Wales's Business & The Environment Programme, affiliated with University of Cambridge. She splits her time between Washington, DC, more rural landholdings in Virginia, and travels widely.

Karen B. Winnick

Karen Winnick is an author and illustrator of children's picture books, including Lucy's Cave, Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers, Sybil's Night Ride, A Year Goes Round, Barn Sneeze, The Night of the Fireflies, Cassie's Sweet Berry Pie, Sandro's Dolphin and Patch & The Strings. Her paintings have been exhibited in local galleries, and her poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies.

She has also produced a play, Kindertransport, about Jewish children sent to England during WWII.

Karen serves as President of the Board of Commissioners for the Los Angeles Zoo; the Board of Trustees Emeritus at Brown University; and the Board of Directors of Fauna & Flora International.

She and her husband, Gary, Chairman of Pacific Capital Group, support many education and literacy programs in Los Angeles and throughout the country.

Karen received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University. She also studied in Florence, Italy, at NYU, the School of Visual Arts, and at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Anita Winsor-Edwards

Anita Winsor-Edwards is a Trustee of the William H. Donner Foundation and the Donner Canadian Foundation. She is currently staying at home to raise her two children and develop an on-line business. She served as the Deputy Director for the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) from July 1999 to March 2002.

Prior to her work at PADF, she was a professional staff member on the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (1995-99).

In 1994 she authored "The Complete Guide to Doing Business in Mexico" a best-selling book published by the American Management Association (AMACOM).

Ms. Winsor-Edwards served as Trade Representative for the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce from 1989-1992. She received a B.A. from Smith College and a Masters from Cambridge University.