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staff

Frank Edward Allen is president and executive director of IJNR.

For more than 25 years, Frank has been a reporter and editor, all the while slighting his true talents as a painter of landscapes, performer of card tricks, coach of Little League and impersonator of Cajuns.

He has worked for dailies and news services in Oregon, Arizona, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania without winning a single Pulitzer Prize.

Frank spent 14 years at The Wall Street Journal, as an editor for Page One and for the Second Front in New York, as chief of the Philadelphia bureau for nine years and later as the paper's first environment editor. Many of the journalists hired and coached by Frank have since distinguished themselves as award-winning reporters, foreign correspondents, bureau chiefs and senior editors. One of them received a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the tobacco industry.

Maggie Bishop Allen is the den mother, bill payer and logistics boss for all IJNR programs.

This means she is a powerful woman. But she is also a very nice person. Maggie has bachelor's and master's degrees in German Language and Literature from Stanford and Oregon, respectively, that she says come in handy at least once a year.

While Frank was in the Navy, Maggie worked on Capitol Hill for a senator from her home state of Arizona. When The Wall Street Journal brought the Allens to New York in 1979, she joined the headquarters staff of the American Field Service. In Pennsylvania, she helped a school district transform its two junior highs into middle schools, and in Montana, she helped create the Hellgate Writing Center, a volunteer-staffed operation for coaching students at one of Missoula's three public high schools. In her spare moments, Maggie climbs into bib overalls and digs in her garden. In her panic moments, she consults the three Allen sons for techno assistance in all computer matters.

Peter Annin joined IJNR in January 2000 as an Associate Director after an 11-year career at Newsweek.

Peter brings valuable journalistic skills and experiences to IJNR. He has reported on natural-resource and environmental topics for more than a decade. Since 1993, as one of Newsweek's hyperactive roving correspondents, he had been specializing in coverage of domestic terrorism and the American radical right, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the Branch Davidian confrontation in Waco, the Unabomber and the Freemen standoff in Montana. Assigned to Newsweek's Houston bureau before moving to Chicago, Peter learned a lot about bug repellent by covering environmental stories in the Louisiana bayou country. He also has written about droughts in the Southwest, hurricanes in the Southeast, ecological-recovery efforts on the Great Lakes, wind-power stations on the Great Plains, forest fires in the Far West, and the causes and consequences of the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

He has a bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia. In September 2006 Peter published his award-winning book, The Great Lakes Water Wars, (Island Press) which has been called the definitive book on the Great Lakes water diversion controversy.

Meg Nelson is IJNR's Development Director.

Meg brings more than 25 years of non-profit experience—primarily with conservation organizations—to IJNR. Her experience includes organizing, policy work, lobbying, and an executive directorship. Mostly though, she’s known as a fundraiser. Over the course of her career, she has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help non-profits do good work. Her experience includes working with policy-based groups and with land trusts. She has worked on the local, state, regional, and national level.

Although Meg currently lives in the Midwest, she spent more than 20 years in Montana and loves the West. To say that she looks forward to her business trips to IJNR’s Missoula, Montana-based headquarters is an understatement.

Meg is an avid canoeist. Although she is primarily a river enthusiast, living in the Midwest has given her the opportunity to canoe the Boundary Waters and kayak the Great Lakes. She has come to relish the horizon line from the Great Lakes almost as much as she relished the horizon line from the Rocky Mountain Front; both are unbroken by human activity and both represent the wide open, wild landscapes that Meg cherishes.

Meg also enjoys gardening, "putting up" vegetables, and spending time with her young nieces and nephews.

Melissa Mylchreest is IJNR's administrative assistant.

When Melissa was in high school, she got herself in a heap of trouble for having the audacity to print the truth in the school paper. Rather than dampen her spirits, this experience thoroughly cemented her long-held notion that the written word is a powerful thing indeed, and jump-started her life as a writer. Incidentally, she also has an abiding interest in environmental issues, which has largely dictated her career choices in the past. Needless to say, she thinks IJNR's dual focus is pretty nifty.

Melissa received a B.A. in creative writing from Connecticut College, and an M.S. in environmental writing from the University of Montana. Her work has appeared in journals and newspapers, and has been aired on Montana Public Radio. She has worked as a teacher, writer, chef, government lackey, and barn-dismantler, among many other things. A staunch 13th-generation northeasterner who wandered West, she has been delighted to find that life in Montana is, in fact, very enjoyable too. At IJNR she does whatever needs doing, and, when she's not working, she still plays with words, navigates Missoula's bike lanes, conducts culinary experiments in the kitchen, and spends as much time as possible outside.

Adam Hinterthuer is a project assistant for IJNR.

Adam is a freelance science and environmental writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. When he isn’t chasing down story ideas or begging editors for work, Adam spends his free time hiking and camping with his wife, Carrie. He can proudly say he saw his first loon this summer on a lake in Minnesota. His hope for a moose sighting, however, remains unfulfilled. Adam recently received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism. He has a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He also works on keeping Peter Annin’s Web site, www.greatlakeswaterwars.com, up-to-date and helps put together materials for IJNR’s numerous fellowships.

In Remembrance

Andrew was IJNR's Associate Director and deputy assistant director for amphibious affairs and all other manner of chores and duties, mainly because he is so versatile. For example, Andrew was also a retired canoe builder, an amateur river guide and a teller of rather tall tales. He spent much of the time with his wife, Abby, and young daughter, Molly, around Kents Hill, Maine.

Further indications of Andrew's superb preparation for his IJNR responsibilities were his degree in Slavic Languages from Hampshire College and his Divinity master's degree from Harvard. Besides all that, he carried under his belt several years of bulldog-tough reporting experience for Maine Times, one of the oldest alternative weeklies in the country, where he handed in articles about the North Woods, agriculture, and salamanders (not necessarily in that order) that invariably were too long and too deep for the readership. After worming his way into the High Country Institute 1997 at the last moment, and then endearing himself to Frank and Maggie at three subsequent Institutes as Acting Assistant Deputy For Just About Everything, Andrew was the personification and embodiment of IJNR-Northeast.