Advisory Board
Meet our Board

Adrienne Sullivan Smith
Advisory Board Chair
Adrienne is a native Californian, raised in San Diego. She is an education leader with humble beginnings, being teacher of kindergarteners. As one who loves reading and writing, Adrienne considers herself a logophile. One of the ways Adrienne finds peace and centering is hiking on trails with the tallest, strongest, most beautiful redwoods, where she is forced to look up.
Bob Siegel
Advisory Board Member
Following seven years of service in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer and administrator, Bob returned to San Francisco and taught ESL at City College of San Francisco. Presently, Bob serves on the board of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, leads hikes, and performs citizen-science surveys for Pt. Reyes National Seashore and Beach Watch.

Denise Chilson
Advisory Board Member
Originally from Colorado, Denise moved to San Francisco in 2017. She lives in the Inner Sunset and has found a sense of place in San Francisco by connecting to the city’s geography and ecology through meandering walks, bike rides and habitat stewardship. In her professional life, Denise works for a housing non-profit as an accounting manager.
Karen Duderstadt
Advisory Board Member
Karen is a Clinical Professor Emerita at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing and former Director of the Pediatric Advanced Practice Nursing Program. She completed her PhD at UCSF in Nursing & Health Policy in 2006, and her research focused on access to care for low-income children. Her clinical practice over the past 15 years was with the urban, low-income Spanish speaking population of children and families at the Children's Health Center at San Francisco General Hospital. Her work in the community over three decades focused on access to care for patients and their families.
Karen was a founding member of the National Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE) and is currently on the Steering Committee and the Policy and Advocacy Committee working on environmental policy. She has presented and published on a wide range of child health policy topics and environmental health issues nationally including the impact of chemical policy and climate change on children's health.
She has lived in the Inner Sunset community for many years and has been active in Inner Sunset Park Neighbors (ISPN) events. She was a member of the UCSF Comprehensive Parnassus Heights Planning Committee in 2017-2018 and has continued to be involved in the neighborhood UCSF Community Relations meetings.
In 2019, she began working with Craig Dawson on developing a children’s educational program for Sutro Stewards focused on increasing children’s engagement and connection with nature. Research has shown that increasing children’s access to nature improves health and increases understanding the importance of protecting the natural environment. She worked with Craig and Ildiko Polony to submit the Health & Nature Proposal to UCSF in June 2020. The proposal has been approved by UCSF. Funding for the proposal is pending.
Karen is committed to supporting the work of Sutro Stewards, preserving and protecting Mt. Sutro, and to implementing the Health & Nature Program.

Kevin Siegel
Advisory Board Member
Kevin is a Bay Area native and 30-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and raised his two daughters. He regularly hikes, bikes, and runs the streets of San Francisco, and particularly loves the urban oasis that is Mt. Sutro Reserve. Having enjoyed the reserve for many years, Kevin is happy to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the trails as a trail crew volunteer and to the leadership of the Sutro Stewards organization as a member of the Advisory Board. In his professional life, Kevin is a public agency lawyer, representing cities and other local agencies regarding land use, environmental, tax, elections, contract, condemnation, and other areas of municipal law.
Maryann Rainey
Advisory Board Secretary
Maryann is a California native and a former pediatric nurse practitioner, now retired. She obtained my undergraduate degree from SFSU and my master's from UCSF. She was the charge nurse on the kidney transplant unit in 1989 at UCSF when the earthquake hit. The rocking and the rolling of the building was unforgettable! Maryann is married and loves to bird watch and garden in her free time. She has lived in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco for over four decades. She is devoted to habitat restoration in order to foster biodiversity. Thanks to the education that she has received as a volunteer for the Sutro Stewards' Native Plant Nursery, she's seen the tapestry of vegetation with greater detail than before
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Steve Leonoudakis
Advisory Board Member
Steve is a native San Franciscan, raised in the shadow of Mt. Davidson, site of many childhood adventures, and where he gained an appreciation for open spaces in the city. He worked as director of UCSF’s Outdoors Unlimited, a cooperative outdoor adventure program that served both the campus and the community for 29 years. He has lived a block from Mt. Sutro’s Stanyan Street trailhead for 35 years, and reaped the fruits of Sutro Stewards' labor to open the mountain’s unique and rare nature to the people of San Francisco.
Join our Advisory Board
Our mission is to build community, connect people with nature, and protect and enhance Mt. Sutro, one of San Francisco's wildest and most beautiful green spaces.
Our vision is a wild and thriving Mount Sutro that offers adventure and respite to the people of San Francisco. We envision the open space as a treasured place where well-maintained trails, expanses of restored locally native plant communities and a healthy and diverse forest support flourishing wildlife habitat and foster deep connections to nature.
Joining the Sutro Stewards Advisory Board will give you the opportunity to have a positive impact in your community, take action to enhance biodiversity and improve access to nature, and be immersed in a nature-based learning environment. We are a fun and dedicated group of individuals passionate about ensuring Mt. Sutro is a thriving green space for all to enjoy. You can read more about our current Board members above.
Joining the Board at this moment in our organization’s history would position you to make a great impact at a time of potential and growth. Sutro Stewards is growing! We are completing our first pilot year of the Health in Nature program in partnership with UCSF; and in the spring of 2022 we launched a campaign to restore Woodland Canyon Creek on Mount Sutro, one of few remaining aboveground creeks in San Francisco. Board members will have input into new strategic and conservation plans that are in development. It is a moment for creativity and determination. These are exciting times!
We've identified the following priorities as we seek new Board members:
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Perspectives -- Individuals who reside or work in San Francisco and are interested in both conserving natural spaces and making those spaces accessible. We are also seeking a diverse array of perspectives including people of color; LGBTQ people; people of all ages, people of varying physical abilities and more.
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Knowledge -- finance, development, Bay Area restoration ecology, land use management - especially riparian ecosystems, native plant propagation, environmental education, connections with the local community and greater San Francisco
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Skills -- Engaging underserved communities, environmental education programming, fundraising, creative problem solving and visioning, strategic planning
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Commitment -- Our valued Board members contribute time and expertise to ensure Mt. Sutro continues to be a welcoming and wild green space. Please expect to devote 2-3 hours, 6 times per year to advisory board meetings and review materials before meetings. Opportunities to join special sub-committees are also available. In addition to regular board meetings, board members are encouraged to participate in our conservation and/or trail management efforts on Mt. Sutro.
We cannot wait for you to join us in taking effective action to have a positive impact on our community! Interested? Please fill out the questionnaire with the button below!
Join us!