Hans Voss, Executive Director hans@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext. 14
Hans is the Michigan Land Use Institute’s immensely capable and visionary executive director, a post he has held since August 2000. He joined the staff in 1995 as the coordinator of the Institute’s project to bring about more environmentally sensitive practices in the oil and gas industry. His work helped to make oil and gas development the most visible grassroots environmental policy debate in Michigan. His articles on the subject were published in the Detroit Free Press, the Traverse City Record-Eagle, and the Great Lakes Bulletin.
Under his guidance as executive director, the Institute constructed a new green office in Beulah, opened three regional offices in Lansing, Traverse City, and Grand Rapids, and expanded its staff and budget. The organization is now among the largest state-based environmental and land use policy and advocacy organizations in America. In 2003 Hans was appointed by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm to the bipartisan Michigan Land Use Leadership Council, where he distinguished himself as one of the 26-member panel's best-prepared, most knowledgeable and most influential members. In August 2003 the council made 160 recommendations to the Legislature and the Granholm administration about how to curb sprawl, rebuild cities, preserve farmland, and improve Michigan's economic competitiveness. The recommendations were consistent with policies the Institute has advocated since its founding.
Prior to joining the Institute, Hans worked for an environmental consulting firm in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1991, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Resource Development from Michigan State University. He and his wife Maureen and two young daughters, Aiden and Lucy, live in Traverse City.
Janice is the newest addition to the Institute’s blue-ribbon Entrepreneurial Agriculture Project. She supports the development and execution of the 2006 Taste the Local Difference guide to farm foods; the planning, logistical coordination, and promotion of the statewide Seeds of Prosperity Conference; and outreach, program development, and information management for the overall project.
Janice grew up in Auburn Hills and spent many summers in northern Michigan, where the beautiful lakes, forests, rolling hills and farmland were a great escape from the fast-sprawling Detroit area. After earning a B.B.A. in Human Resources Management at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti and working in the business world for a few years, she realized that she longed for something more. She spent some time traveling and then set out for the South, where she worked as the House Manager for the American Dance Festival at Duke University in North Carolina.
Later, she moved to rural eastern Kentucky and volunteered for the Christian Appalachian Project, where she fell in love with the landscape, the local culture, and her husband, Kevin, who is originally from New York City. While there, she helped to open a child development center, provided home visitation to homebound seniors, taught adult education, and gave health education presentations to area schools. She noticed big-box stores replacing small town businesses, asphalt replacing natural areas, driving replacing walking, and generic replacing unique. She’s seen that back in Auburn Hills, but witnessing it in culturally rich Appalachia hit her hard.
“I was moved by the small, simple towns and a community-minded way of life where people walked to the post office and gathered there to share local news,” Janice says. “Over the years, though, I realized that the things that drew me to the area were starting to change because of the arrival of large chain stores. I watched small town businesses close their doors one after the other as people chose to drive great distances in search of a great deal—a recurring theme in almost every place I moved to.”
This pointed Janice’s personal and professional commitments toward community building, local farms and businesses, historic preservation, and environmental stewardship. After moving to Traverse City in 2000, she used her formidable skills to recruit, train, and supervise volunteers for Catholic Human Services’ Senior Companion and Foster Grandparent program. Janice developed program videos, partnerships with new agencies, and computerized processes; she also planned the 2005 Michigan Association of Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions State Conference.
She left that position in 2005 to devote more time to promoting local farms, and says she is thrilled to be doing exactly that at the Institute. Janice enjoys working in her organic vegetable and herb garden, fixing up her century-old house in downtown Traverse City, hiking, biking, and swimming with her husband and their dog, Tanner.
Patty leads the Institute’s innovative and far-reaching statewide project to strengthen entrepreneurialism in agriculture. The project, now in its third year, is introducing local and state leaders to the 21st-century potential of innovative, market-savvy farm and food operations and showing them how they can improve their communities by helping these new and inventive approaches to farming succeed.
Raised on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks, Patty began her career as an economic research associate at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a leading economic and environmental policy think tank in Snowmass, Colorado. She later joined the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader as a senior business reporter and columnist, and won the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College.
After leaving the newspaper, Patty taught business administration at Drury College and embarked on a freelance journalism career that included publishing articles in Ms. magazine, and U.S. News & World Report. She is the author of a ground-breaking report for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center on the hazards of factory hog farming, a report that a Kellogg Foundation program officer said is the most learned assessment of the issue ever published.
Patty joined the Institute in 1998, and has served as a grassroots organizer and journalist, managing editor, and project director.
Patty graduated summa cum laude from the University of Missouri, earning B.A. degrees in economics and political science. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Cologne, Germany. She also earned a M.A. in Business Administration from Drury College.
Patty’s co-workers were impressed by how she found all the best places in the area for great music and swing dancing within weeks of arriving in Benzonia from Missouri.
Diane works with Patty Cantrell to help family farms in northwest Lower Michigan increase their reach and revenues by meeting new consumer demand for safe, healthy foods from nearby farms. Diane focuses on local food marketing, including building bridges between farms and area restaurants, food services, and retail buyers.
Diane brings to her work a proven record of superb reporting and writing, extensive knowledge of local growers and markets, and passion as an advocate for entrepreneurial agriculture. She began her journalism career as a reporter for the Manistee News Advocate, and then worked for a time in Minneapolis for the Twin Cities Courier, an African American family weekly, and for Northern Sun News, an alternative monthly that focused on environmental issues. In 1986 she joined the Traverse City Record-Eagle, and over the next 12 years produced thoughtful, well-reported, and consistently fair work on agriculture, poverty, water, economics, health, and the environment.
Diane's reporting earned a bushel of state Associated Press and Michigan Press Association awards, and national honors from the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for a series she contributed to on poverty in the region.
After leaving the paper in 1998, Diane focused her writing on agriculture and developed a new voice as an advocate for fresh, flavorful fruits, vegetables, breads, meats, and other area farm products. In 2000 she joined the board of the Oryana Food Cooperative in Traverse City, a successful member-based natural food store, and started a new effort to stock and promote local farm foods.
In 2002 Diane helped start and became the market master for the Leland Farmers Market, building the weekly enterprise into a showcase of local agriculture discovery. Diane served on the Leelanau County Farmland Preservation Board, where she helped draft one of the first county farmland preservation ordinances in the state. She also researched and amassed a listing of 140 local food producers and their offerings for the Institute's Select a Taste of Traverse Bay guide to local farm foods.
Diane was raised near Springboro, Ohio, south of Dayton, and educated at Michigan State University, where she received a B.S. degree in journalism. She and her husband, Dean Conners, live in Cedar. They invite family and friends every March to join them around the fire and a long metal tray bubbling with maple sap collected from trees on their land.
It was the writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who during a tour of America 177 years ago noted the crucial role of local leaders and small associations in making the country work. That clearly is the case with Judy and all of the exceptional public interest work she’s done in Benzie and Manistee counties. We’ve known Judy a long time, ever since the early 1990s when the Institute’s predecessor organization, the Michigan Communities Land Use Coalition, was just getting started and Judy was one of our most active supporters in Manistee County. At the time Judy was the program coordinator for the Manistee Area Public Schools and organized a collaboration between industry, educators, students, and local governments in Manistee to recycle paper in four county school districts. The trash-to-cash project collected 1,200 tons of paper and returned almost $30,000 annually to youth activities in Brethren, Bear Lake, Onekama, and the public and Catholic high schools in Manistee. In the late 1990s, as the program coordinator for Lakeshore Enterprises, Judy helped to organize a similar school-based paper recycling program in Benzie County. Judy convened 200 students for EarthSave, the first Manistee County Regional youth environmental conference, which the Institute co-sponsored in 2000. She was a leader in the 2004 citizen campaign to block a coal-fired power plant in Manistee and develop a cleaner alternative regional energy strategy. A graduate of Michigan State University, Judy lives in an energy-efficient, resource-conserving straw bale house she built herself in Bear Lake.
Gail Dennis, Design and Marketing Director gail@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext.12
Gail is responsible for making all Institute publications look superb. Mixing color, form, space, and lines, Gail's graphic design has produced a distinctive look that engages our members, and thousands of citizens. Directors of other state and national organizations regularly compliment Gail and the Institute for setting new standards of graphic design for American public interest organizations.
A talented, versatile and experienced graphic designer, Gail was born and raised in Garfield Township, just south of Traverse City. After receiving her degree in graphic design from Northwestern Michigan College in 1986 she launched a successful freelance career, working for a number of regional and national book and magazine publishers. Her clients have included St. Martin’s Press and Henry Holt Publishers in New York, and Harbor House Publishers, Dennos Museum and Northwestern Michigan College in northern Michigan. Gail also spent five years as project manager at The Art Farm, an illustration and Web site design studio in Williamsburg, Michigan.
"I grew up wandering the fields and woods around my family home, and spent hours studying wildflowers and grasses, planting gardens, climbing trees, sketching, and gazing at the spectacular view from our hilltop home. I grew to know and love the natural world," says Gail, who joined the Institute staff in 2000. "Those same fields now are crowded with subdivisions. I watched it happen with a sense of helplessness. Until I heard the Institute’s message — local control, planned growth, respect for land and the people who inhabit it — I believed there was nothing I could do to stop uncontrolled growth. Now I see that I can do two things: Help the Institute create effective visual communications to further our message, and get involved at the local level."
Gail lives on the Old Mission Peninsula with her husband, the noted author Jerry Dennis. They are the parents of two sons, Aaron and Nick. In her spare time Gail enjoys gardening, canoeing, and walking the beaches of Lake Michigan.
Jim oversees the Institute's publications and assists in the production and development of the Web site and other communications tools. Prior to joining the Institute, Jim spent two years in the 1990s as managing editor of Metro Times in Detroit, the state's largest weekly newspaper. Jim also directed the Ford Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival and has spent time behind and in front of the microphone as a broadcast radio producer and on-air host. Most recently he hosted a Saturday evening rhythm and blues program on WDET-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate in Detroit.
A skilled environmental journalist, Jim is a talent in every aspect of his professional life. In 2003 he received the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers for his 2002 Jazz Times cover article, "Hard Bop/Hard Times: Music, Madness & Drummer Roy Brooks." Jim received the award, one of the most revered in music journalism, at Lincoln Center in New York.
Jim brings the same energy, creativity, experience, and firm grip to his work as the Institute's managing editor. And he brings the proven capacity to oversee complex print and broadcast projects. He is refining the Institute's ability to use its Web site, news service, and reports to inform the public and influence useful changes in public policy. Jim also plays an important role in marketing the Institute.
"I've always felt that in building a staff it's a real advantage to have people onboard who bring other talents to the table," he says. "It gives the organization more depth, experience, knowledge, and, ultimately, wisdom. Editing the Institute's publications is a very exciting and satisfying prospect, and it's just one of many ways I hope to be able to help the Institute grow."
Jim joined the Institute in 2002 after it had already spent nearly a decade developing an effective communications program that is unique among state-based Smart Growth research and policy organizations in the United States. With his help the Institute has plans to add radio and television to its communications toolbox and become a multi-media organization.
Jim is a University of Michigan graduate, earning a B.A. in journalism and music literature. He's a native of Detroit and a longtime resident of that city who also has life-long ties to northern Michigan: His family has a summer cottage on Lake Huron near Rogers City. He now lives in Beulah and, true to the Institute's mission, walks a rails-to-trails path on his way to work.
Andy Guy, Great Lakes Project Director aguy@mlui.org 616-308-6250
Andy, who was born in Traverse City and raised in Grand Rapids, managed the Institute’s project to revive the state Natural River Act, which succeeded in 2003 in designating the Pine and Upper Manistee as protected rivers, the first in Michigan since 1988. As one of the Midwest's great young environmental journalists, Andy now directs the Institute's new Great Lakes Water Security Project. He is the Institute's expert on water policy and the lead author of the Institute's seminal 2001 "Liquid Gold Rush" report. In the spring of 2003, Andy attended the World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan.
Andy, in short, is adding his considerable talents as a journalist and policy specialist to the hard work of developing a modern water policy in Michigan. He also contributes to every facet of the Institute’s communications program including writing reports, preparing articles for the Great Lakes Bulletin and the Web site, as well as writing for other publications and public radio.
Prior to joining the Institute, Andy turned his passion for the written word and natural resource protection into a beautifully crafted and well-read column on the environment for The Paper, the progressive alternative weekly in Grand Rapids. Andy’s ability to range widely, report carefully, and write eloquently caught the eye of the Institute's senior leaders, who successfully recruited him to open our Grand Rapids office in 2001. He has wowed city officials, business leaders, and citizens in Michigan's second largest metropolitan region ever since.
Andy’s career also has included posts in the Michigan Senate Majority Policy Office, where he prepared background papers on proposed environmental legislation, and a stint at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, where he worked with communities and citizens to protect water quality.
Andy studied at Michigan State University where he received a B.S. in natural resource policy and management. He has completed course work for an M.A. in environmental communication and is finishing his thesis. He enjoys hiking, kayaking, and reading, and plays the point and shooting guard positions with equal aplomb.
Julie works on the Institute’s northwest Michigan team, where she dedicates her time to Leelanau County. Julie collaborates with citizens and officials there who share the Institute’s basic goals: preserving farmland and other open space, helping farms become more prosperous, revitalizing village downtowns, and stopping sprawling development that can harm that area’s stunning scenery and environment. She’s quickly made strong, positive impressions on all sorts of people around the county. Before she arrived at the Institute, Julie’s career had little to do with Smart Growth, but lots to do with bringing educational opportunities to young people who need it most. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a political science degree, the longtime Traverse City resident worked in the Grand Traverse region for the Boys and Girls Club, the Traverse City Area Public Schools, and the Head Start program, where she managed eight centers in a four-county area that served more than 400 low-income children. But the more she fell in love with the beauty of her surroundings, the more interested she became in environmental advocacy. One turning point was her realization of what a difference the Sleeping Bear National Shore Line makes in controlling development along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Another was seeing what she calls “the sprawl monster on South Airport Road outside of Traverse City” was doing to traffic, air quality, and the scenery. So, when she saw the Institute’s opening for a Leelanau County policy specialist, she jumped at it. Her dashing high energy and commitment got her the job. “It’s a leap in a great direction,” she says. “The advocacy, having a positive effect on development in northern Michigan, the sense of humor around here, the Web site, how the Institute stopped the bridge and bypass through the Boardman River valley: I just love the Michigan Land Use Institute!” Currently Julie lives in Traverse City, where she grows lots of houseplants and enjoys walking to work.
Richard J. Hitchingham, Bookkeeper dick@mlui.org 1-231-882-4723 ext.21
Richard J. Hitchingham, who lives on a 40-acre farm in Springdale Township, helped to found the Michigan Land Use Institute and served on our board from the organization's start in April 1995 until 2003. Prior to the Institute's founding, Dick was a leader of the Michigan Communities Land Use Coalition, an all-volunteer grassroots advocacy organization, based in Springdale Township, that was started around Dick's kitchen table and was the predecessor organization to the Institute. In 2004, Dick was elected to the Springdale Township Board of Trustees, where he serves as the treasurer. A former trust investment analyst with City National Bank in Detroit, Dick is a graduate of the University of Detroit with a B.S. in finance and a Masters in Business Administration.
Jane Kowieski, Graphic Assistant jane@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext. 17
Jane Kowieski is the Institute’s first-ever graphic assistant, brought in to help us meet our steadily increasing design and production needs. She has degrees in design and visual communications from Michigan State University and Northwestern Michigan College. A veteran freelancer, Jane has done everything from teaching calligraphy to adults to managing production for one of Traverse City’s top graphic design studios. She is thrilled with the chance to align her professional life with her convictions about Smart Growth and preserving natural resources.
Jane’s commitment to protecting open spaces and natural resources is deeply rooted in childhood camping trips in northern Michigan and summer visits to her grandparents’ farm in Illinois, where she worked in the vegetable garden and tended the animals alongside her family.
Jane was born and raised in East Lansing, then moved to Northwestern Michigan over twenty years ago, after traveling all over the country and Europe. “When it was time to settle down and plant both feet firmly in the ground on one spot, this was where it was. Being a lover of nature, animals, and the seasons, it was a natural place for me to settle.”
These days, Jane and her husband, Dan, live with two Labrador retrievers and seven parakeets on 32 acres of land near Interlochen. They maintain a wildlife refuge preserve on their land, and grow much of their own food and flowers. They are avid foragers, naturalists, and organic gardeners. Jane is also an enthusiastic long distance runner who loves hitting the trails near her house and crossing the Mackinac Bridge for races on Mackinac Island and the Upper Peninsula.
Jim Lively, Northwest Michigan Program Director jim@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext.13
Jim, a certified AICP planner, directs the Leelanau Smart Growth Coalition, a grassroots support project that focuses exclusively on assisting citizens and local governments in one of the Midwest's most beautiful counties.
Jim joined the Institute in 2001 and immediately put his widely recognized expertise in planning, and his patience in the public policy process to work. In 2002 he helped to resolve a seven-year dispute and produced a new management plan for ensuring the ecological integrity while providing greater access to Whitefish Point in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Jim worked with social service and transit officials in Livingston County to develop a strategic plan for expanding public transit. And he led the Institute’s campaign to protect publicly-owned and globally-rare sand dunes on South Fox Island which the state was determined to trade for private land owned by an important political donor.
Prior to joining the Institute Jim served for nine years as the regional planning programs manager at the Northwest Michigan Council of Governments. There he promoted the development of computerized mapping programs to enhance planning, prepared a regional Greenways plan highlighting trail and wildlife corridor connections, implemented training and education programs for citizen planners, and managed transportation, solid waste, and demographic programs.
From 1999 to 2001, Jim was a community planner at the Land Information Access Association, a nonprofit land use research group in Traverse City. Jim studied at Michigan State University, where he received B.S. degrees in fisheries and wildlife, and biological sciences as well as a secondary teaching certificate. He also has an M.S. in resource development from Michigan State.
Jim and his wife, Kelly, live on a farm in Leelanau County with their four children, Emily, Marley, Jane, and Anna.
Joe Mielke, Technology Coordinator joem@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext. 23
Joe is always hard at work fixing computer problems, fielding questions, improving file-sharing and communication between our offices, and generally helping us get the most out of our computer technology. Joe officially joined MLUI’s staff in early 2006, after working for the Institute on a consulting basis for a year and a half.
Before joining the Institute, Joe was a computer consultant in northern Michigan. He’s spent the last installing newspaper and publishing computer systems, training people, and managing projects at an Ann Arbor software company that grew from five people to 130 people while he was there. Joe picked up most of his computer skills through extensive practical experience and continues to hone his skills and introduce new, time-saving programs to the Institute.
Joe also draws on his first-hand experience as a newspaper reporter and editor and his bachelor’s degree in communications and journalism from Michigan State University as he provides technical support and guidance for the Institute’s award-winning journalism. A tremendous asset for the Institute in many ways, he is excited to work for an organization that positively affects growth and development.
Joe lives in Kingsley with his wife, son, 13 ducks, 15 chickens, one rabbit, one turtle, one cat and one dog. The family enjoy snowshoeing, exploring the woods, short trips to the Upper Peninsula, and adventures in England, Costa Rica, California, and other worldwide destinations. They also share an unusual hobby, geo-caching, a sort of worldwide Easter Egg hunt in which people hide small objects, post theirs geographical coordinates on the web, and search for objects other people have hidden. Joe says that it’s a great way to discover new places that you would never visit otherwise.
Glenn Puit, Emmet County Policy Specialist glenn@mlui.org 231-487-0930
Before becoming the Institute’s journalist and policy specialist in Emmet County in May 2007, Glenn spent 11 years at the Las Vegas Review Journal, where he distinguished himself as one of the West’s best investigative reporters. Glenn brings an exceptional mix of skills to his Institute post, as well as a winning personality to a rural county of 33,000 people that is growing by nearly 500 new residents a year. He works with citizens and elected leaders to develop effective responses to big-box store and strip mall proposals, support new development that enhances existing neighborhoods in Harbor Springs and Petoskey, and make sure that transportation projects promote downtown businesses and not sprawl. “I can’t tell you how ready I am for this,” he said. “I wanted a new challenge. I also was extremely impressed with the people at the Institute when I first came out in March. They are kind and energetic. I could tell immediately they were going to be the type of people I wanted to be around.” Glenn was raised in upstate New York, in Lansing, a small town near Ithaca, where he learned his way around a dairy farm, cold weather, and deep snow. He spent three years on the staff of the Florence, S.C. Morning News, and then joined the Review-Journal, where he held various posts and won numerous awards reporting on police, the courts, and crime. He served as a journalism instructor at the University of Nevada, and is the author of two well-received true-crime books: Witch (Berkley, 2005) and Fire in the Desert (Stephens Press, 2006). Glenn’s journey to Michigan began several years ago, when he had earned enough from his book advances and sales to consider building a home near the water. He searched around the Midwest. Guided by a realtor’s tip to look in the Upper Peninsula, he landed near Houghton and found the right spot on Lake Superior, where he built a vacation home. “That’s what got me interested in Michigan,” he said. “I was overwhelmed by the beauty. I think it’s the most beautiful place in America.” Glenn received a B.A. in journalism from Indiana State University. He was twice voted the Best Print Reporter in Las Vegas by the weekly Citylife newspaper. He and his wife, Tina Lee Allen, a former teacher from San Diego, have three young children; Garrison, Glenn Jr., and Gracie Lee.
Doug Rose, Web Coordinator doug@mlui.org 231-941-6584 ext.15
Doug is the wired wizard who manages the content, design, production, user-friendliness, and dynamism of the Web site. While keeping current with the online publishing of the Institute’s work, he’s always developing new ways to make the site more interactive. The result is one of the widely-read Web sites in the environmental and land use policy arena. The Institute's site has received numerous awards for excellence and is a two-time winner of Planetizen.com's annual "Top 50 Web Sites." Doug attended the Interlochen Arts Academy for two summers as an art and drama student. In 1995 he returned to school to train as a graphic designer at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, where he became enthralled by the potential for merging graphic design into all forms of communication on the Internet. After graduating from the visual communications program with honors, Doug launched a successful freelance Web design company. He also worked as a graphic designer for print publication, laying out the arts and entertainment sections for Northern Express, a weekly newspaper based in Traverse City. He joined the Institute's staff in 2000. Doug enjoys reading and staying current with trends in art, design, and new media. On working for the Institute, he says, "It’s rare you get to combine something you enjoy with something worth doing. I feel lucky to be here."
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MLUI Offices
Traverse City Office:
148 E. Front St., Suite 301
Traverse City, MI
49684-5725
231-941-6584
Fax: 231-929-0937
Benzie Office: Michigan Land Use Institute
254 South Benzie Blvd.
Second Floor
Beulah, MI 49617
231-882-4122
Emmet Office: Glenn Puit Emmet Policy Michigan Land Use Institute
325 E. Lake Street, Ste. 22
Petoskey, MI 49770-2463
231-487-0930
Fax – 231-487-0932
Grand Rapids Office: Andy Guy Grand Rapids and Great Lakes Policy Michigan Land Use Institute
25 Ionia SW, Ste. 505
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
616-308-6250
2008 Michigan Land Use Institute.
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148 E. Front St., Suite 301. Traverse City, MI 49684-5725 Phone: 231-941-6584 Fax: 231-929-0937 webinfo@mlui.org
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