Meet our Leaders
Sag Moraine is run entirely by volunteers; there are no paid staff. Sag Moraine thanks the individuals who volunteer their time, resources, and energy to serving our native plant community.
Board of Directors
Alexia Neubauer, President
Alexia serves as President of Sag Moraine Native Plant Community, where she combines creativity, strategy, and a deep love of nature to engage and inspire others to plant native. With a background in marketing, design, and development, Alexia brings a creative and strategic approach to expanding Sag Moraine’s reach through digital media, educational programming, and partnerships. Under her leadership, Sag Moraine continues to grow its presence through online resources, including a rapidly expanding YouTube channel and Native Plant Finder, helping make native gardening accessible to a wider audience.
Alexia has been growing native plants from seed for several years, transforming her own suburban yard into a thriving habitat for pollinators and wildlife. She lives in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, where she enjoys seeing the beauty and biodiversity that native plants bring to every season.
Lisa Vinci, Vice President
Lisa is an internist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. She has 30 years of teaching experience in medicine with a focus on quality improvement and health equity. She has lived in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago for the last 25 years and has attempted to plant every square inch of open space with something. She is passionate about environmental conservation and is hoping to use her skills and experience in science and education to promote native plant gardening and ecological restoration in the local community and beyond.
Mary Gelder, Secretary
Mary holds degrees in Environmental Health Sciences, Telecommunications Systems, and Computer Engineering. A software developer for over 25 years, Mary serves the Sag Moraine Native Plant Community as Technical Director. Native plants are central to Mary’s own home garden, adding color and texture to the landscape, attracting butterflies, and mitigating neighborhood floods during flash storms.
Donna McCash, Treasurer
Donna currently teaches English as a Second Language at the junior high school level. Before becoming a teacher, Donna had a successful 30-year career at the Social Security Administration. With over 35 years in the public sector, Donna has amassed a wide range of communication, organization, and problem-solving skills. Her educational status includes a BA in Business Administration and a Master’s Degree in Education. As an educator, Donna hopes to inspire future generations about environmentalism.
Linda Negele, Secretary
Linda Negele has been a volunteer for Sag Moraine since its inception. She recently joined the Board of Directors and serves on the Public Relations and Plant Sale Committees. Linda works to educate new and seasoned gardeners about the beauty and importance of native plants. She chairs the Environmental Advisory Group for the Carillon Club of Naperville HOA, where she encourages residents of her community to add native plants to traditional landscapes. She is a member of the Illinois Native Plant Society and The Conservation Foundation.
Linda has a BA, Master’s, and Ph.D. in Computer Science. Now retired, her professional career in the automotive and trucking industries centered on project and program management for technical projects.
Michelle Bolander, Secretary
Michelle earned a Visual Communications Degree from Loyola University Chicago, before working in design, marketing, and user experience strategy consulting, across various industries. Her passion lies in uniting brilliant people to achieve lofty goals. She believes in solving problems through effective communication, research-based decision making, and an open mindset. Most recently she’s dedicated her time to raising her young family. This has given her an opportunity to explore her interests in gardening and understanding the impact of our choices on the ecosystems around us. Discovering the effects of declining native plant species has further motivated her to prioritize stewardship of the natural world and to pass that knowledge on to her son. As Director of Audience Strategy, Michelle aspires to apply her professional experience toward uncovering solutions to the challenges we all face with supporting native landscapes and wildlife.
Amanda McCash, Board Member
Amanda graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in journalism and public relations. She currently works as a content marketing specialist for a digital marketing agency, Straight North. Amanda is passionate about communication and recognizes the huge impact that messaging can have on any major endeavor. She serves Sag Moraine as Communications Director and hopes that as such, she can help spread the word on our environmental goals and make real change in our current landscape.
Other Leaders
Catherine Bryla, Founder
Catherine, along with her late husband Jim, are the founders of Sag Moraine Native Plant Community. She has a Master’s Degree in Exercise Physiology and ran her own personal training business for 25 years. Catherine’s passion for the environment inspired her to use her entrepreneurial skills to form an organization that would both benefit the environment and provide an enjoyable experience for all involved. Catherine served as Board President, and led Sag Moraine for the first five years of the organization. Sag Moraine thanks Catherine for her vision, passion, and hard work in promoting native plants and supporting our community, as well as her ongoing efforts on behalf of the organization.
Vicki Ramirez, Plant Sale Director
Vicki has been an educator for over 30 years and has worked with children/adults from 3 to 21 years. She believes that it is important to teach our children how to be good stewards of the Earth and all its plants and creatures that are so interdependent. Vicki enjoys working with Sag Moraine to educate the next generation about the importance of taking care of “Our” environment.
Clare Parkinson, Website Architect
Clare has been building open-source websites for nonprofits for over 20 years. She lives in a 1918 house with the original prairie topsoil on a tiny suburban lot. There’s not much space, so the native plants grow right next to the vegetable garden and between the tomatoes. She likes to watch the pollinators buzz around in their own little ecosystem. Her favorites are the metallic green bees; she also raises monarch and swallowtail butterflies. She thinks even a small space can be used to provide habitat for our native insects, and would love to introduce more people to the fun of watching backyard bugs.
Sue Miller, Membership Director
Sue connected with the Sag Moraine Native Plant Community through her love and care of Monarch butterflies. In the past years, she has raised hundreds of Monarch butterflies in her own backyard. Sue serves Sag Moraine as Membership Director. She holds a Business Marketing degree and works as a Director of Change Management – improving and implementing new processes and procedures. She enjoys creating ways to inspire and inform adults and children to take an active part in protecting butterflies, bees and all pollinators.