Board of Directors
EXECUTIVE BOARD
- Peter Chase Neumann, Chairman, Board of Directors
- Chip Latham, Vice-Chairman
- Douglas G. Smith, President
- Neal Cobb, Vice-President
- Chuck Swezey, Treasurer
- John Hara, Secretary
- Charlie Ragusa, Director-at-Large
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADVISORY BOARD
- Tom Clark
- Jan Gilbert
- Ginnie Kersey
- Candice Pearce
- Helene Sasser
- Dr. A.A. Schonder
- Jessica Scott (Eastern Nevada)
- Richard Wood
HONORARY BOARD
- Buffy Jo Dreiling
- Vivian Freeman
- Toni Harsh
- Marilyn Melton
- Sunny Minedew
- Peter Chase Neumann
- Renate Neumann
- Jim Pilzner
- Sherry Pilzner
- Penny Roskoski
- Walt Roskoski
- Douglas G. Smith
- Chris Wicker
Douglas G. Smith, Chairman
Doug Smith was born and raised on a Montana wheat and cattle ranch. After completing high school he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Machine Gunner and Drill Instructor.
He served in the Korean War and was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds received in enemy action. After being discharged from the US Marine Corps, Smith attended and graduated with a BS Degree from Montana State University.
He returned to MSU to receive his Masters Degree after being out of college for 22 years. His many work related experiences included: County Extension Agent, Chairman; Director, Montana State ASCS Office; Director Montana Water Resources Board; Office of the Montana Governor; Assistant Director, Western Wheat Associates; Real Estate Associate; Manager, Apartment Complex; Safety and Energy Specialist, UNR; Safety Specialist, Circus Circus--Hotel Casino; Safety Specialist, Nevada Office of Traffic Safety and Loss Control Consultant, Nevada SIIS. He is currently serving as a member of the Reno Ward 1 Neighborhood Advisory Board and is a member of the Scenic America, Board of Directors.
Smith has served as a Reno Planning Commissioner and a Reno member of the first Regional Planning Commission where he became involved in approving a Reno Billboard Ordinance.
He formed Citizens for a Scenic Reno in January of 2000 along with concerned citizens who desired to limit the proliferation of billboards and wanted to assist in rewriting a new Billboard Ordinance. Smith has served as Chairman of Scenic Nevada for the past two years. He recieved the W. Clark Santini Cup in May 2002 because of his work leading a grass roots petition effort that helped usher in a law to curtail billboard advertising in the Truckee Meadows.
In 2004 Doug was awared the Pine Cone Award for his work with Scenic Nevada.
Scott Gibson, Board of Directors
Scott Gibson is the Vice Chair of Scenic Nevada. A civil engineer, he has more than 25 years of highway construction, pavement evaluation and design, and pavement research experience. He has overseen highway and airport construction projects, developed new and rehabilitation pavement designs for projects from major interstates to local roads, and has managed data collection efforts from local projects to international World Bank Projects.
Gibson has been involved in international projects for the World Bank in Nigeria. He was responsible for installing and implementing laboratory and field materials testing equipment, training Nigerian personnel in equipment use and maintenance during the development of the Pavement Evaluation Unit (PEU). This was a facility developed for the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Works, to evaluate and manage the national highway network.
Gibson was responsible for the set up and operation of a field laboratory for the reconstruction of sixty miles of State Highway 305 for the Nevada DOT. Prior to obtaining his engineering degree and professional registration, he was a senior engineering technician, certified by the National Institute for the Certification in Engineering Technologies.
He began his career in 1975 working on a survey crew with the New Mexico Department of Highways involved in the layout and construction control of new highway and bridge alignments.
He holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He is President of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Truckee Meadows Branch; a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Reno Redevelopment Agency; and a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Washoe County Regional Transportation Commision.
Cynthia Albright, Board of Directors
Cynthia Albright has been active in the Truckee Meadows since her arrival to Reno in 1990. For 13 years, Albright has served on numerous commissions and boards including the Reno Recreation and Parks Commission, the Central Neighborhood Advisory Board and Parks and Cultural Arts Foundation Board of Directors. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, and the National Recreation and Park Association.
Albright has a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Architecture from UCLA. As a certified planner with 18 years of public and private sector planning experience, she currently manages the planning and landscape architecture division of Stantec Consulting in Reno. As a Senior Associate, Albright uses her skills in the areas of community involvement, urban design, planning, research and GIS to effectuate positive change in the built environment. Albright performs a broad range of planning services including feasibility studies, master planning, subdivision design, neighborhood plans, GIS database development and analysis, recreation and open space planning.
In 1999, Albright received the DeBoer Award in the "Outstanding Plan" category by the American Planning Association for the Reno-Stead Corridor Joint Plan while employed with Washoe County Community Development.
Albright is honored to serve on the Board of Directors for Scenic Nevada. The pristine mountains, clean air and spectacular views lured her to the Truckee Meadows from a beach community in Orange County. She believes it is important to serve organizations whose edicts preserve the quality of life in the Truckee Meadows.
Chuck Swezey, Treasurer
Chuck Swezey was born and raised in the Finger Lakes region of central New York State. Graduating in 1956 from the U.S. Military Academy, he served as an Artillery Officer, both stateside and in Germany.
In 1962, he was appointed a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department and served in various capacities in Washington and in Latin America. In 1970, he returned to the states to pursue a graduate program in water resources management at Cornell University. He received his Masters in Public Administration degree in 1972. After that he was offered a position within the Research and Development Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Rockville, MD.
Much of his time there was spent working on problems of pollution of the nation's coastal waters and the Great Lakes. In 1984 he was very involved in helping to secure passage of new Federal legislation to protect the striped bass fisheries off the mid-Atlantic coast. Swezey retired from the Federal Government in 1986 and moved to Reno in 1988. Like so many others, he was impressed with the scenic beauty of the Truckee Meadows and the surrounding mountains. Not to mention the mild climate, the sunny days and the relative lack of traffic, although that part is changing, he admits.
Swezey tries to take full advantage of the outdoor activities available here throughout the year. He is convinced that the economic future of the Truckee Meadows is very much dependent on enhancing the attractiveness of our community. This includes stopping the proliferation of billboards. "Billboards should not be growth industry in the Truckee Meadows or anywhere else in Nevada", he asserts.
Swezey is currently serving as Treasurer of Scenic Nevada.
Aline C. Barber, Board of Directors
Aline Barber was born in Berlin, Germany of Polish/Russian parents right after WW11. The family immigrated to the U.S. in 1949 and she was raised in New Jersey and Connecticut before they moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960's. Aline attended Santa Monica City College and UCLA where she thought medicine would be her chosen field. Instead the world became her university and for the next 20 years she traveled the world living in the Middle East and Europe, living and traveling on a 60ft. sailboat with friends for 3 years which took her to Mexico, Central America, the Galapagos Islands, Peru, and the islands of French Polynesia and Hawaii. For a couple of years she co-owned a gallery/boutique in Los Angeles, where they exhibited art and items from the exotic places where she had been. The South Pacific called again and Aline returned to live in Tahiti, then on to Fiji and New Caldonia and sailed to Australia in 1976.
In Australia Aline met her future husband Tom Barber, an Australian architect and environmentalist. She became a professional photographer and "step-mother to a 2 year old boy Ulysses, who is now a Computer Scientist living in Sydney with 5 year old grandson Julian. It was there that Aline and Tom with a small group of people, including founders of Greenpeace from Canada went to Albany, Western Australia to protest and help close down the last whaling station in Australia. Upon returning to the U.S. with Tom in 1980 they worked with a group in Santa Ynez Californi, who were involved with Solar technology and installations. This evolved to other alternative technologies and moving to Tehachapi,California, where Tom designed the first major wind farms in the world. It was a time of "pioneer spirit" and optimism. It proved to them that you can make a difference, be "green", create energy, care for the planet and even make money. Also beautiful design and aesthetics were imperative. Since then Aline has assisted her husband in architectural projects here in the U.S. and abroad.
In 1998 they returned to the U.S. from Sydney with their 6 year old son Tatlin and moved to Reno. Tatlin is now in the 6th grade attending Jessie Beck. Friends and people asked "why Reno"? Aline responded, " because of the beauty, the mountains, the quality of life, an easy place to live and work and raise a family." They bought a home in the southwest because of the proximity to "downtown" and being across the road from the "lovliest meadow" called Rosewood Wash. It was when a developer threatened to build in the wash that Aline got involved with her friends and neighbors Lori and Mark Wray and some others to try and protect the major drainageways and help create and protect open space in Reno. This is how she met Doug Smith, chairman of Scenic Nevada, and became a member and now on the board of directors. In Scenic Nevada, Aline found a wonderfull ecclectic group of people from all walks of life who share one common denominator, "they truly care about Nevada, and are committed to respecting the past, trying to save what beauty is here and to influence how Reno and Nevada evolve in the future."
Mercedes de la Garza, Board of Directors
Mercedes de la Garza has been active in the Reno/Tahoe community for the last seven years and has served on several boards and committees including the City of Reno Arts and Culture Commission, the Reno Redevelopment Agency Citizen Advisory Committee, Historic Reno Preservation Society, Heritage Tourism Coalition, the Truckee Meadows Heritage Trust, the Art Consortium, and the Sierra Business Council.
De la Garza is a licensed architect in Nevada, California, and Texas having received her first professional degree (Bachelor of Architecture) at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989, her second professional degree (Master of Architecture, Design and Theory) at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994 and studied with Enric Miralles (Spain) and Peter Cook (UK) in Post Graduate Master Class at Staatliche Hochschule fŸr Bildende KŸnst - Staedelschule, Frankfurt Germany in 1994-5.
In addition, during 1991-1992 Mercedes pursued an independent study of indigenous architecture in the Sub-Saharan regions of West Africa. Mercedes has been employed with several award-winning architecture firms, most notably with AIA Gold Medallist Charles W. Moore FAIA from 1986 to 1991. Together with team Dagmar Richter, their work was selected as Second Prize in the International Competition for The Royal National Library in Copenhagen, Denmark (1993).
While with Faulkner Architects at Tahoe, de la Garza's designs have received a 1998 AIA CVC Merit Award for Commercial Building and a 2000 AIA CVC Citation Award for Residential Building. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and the United States and has been published in several periodicals including Architectural Record and Zodiac, as well as the 1996 and 1997 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture publications.
She is currently a partner in de la Garza Sonder LP Architect Studio in Reno, Nevada and de la Garza Rusanoff Sonder Architect Studio in Truckee California. Mercedes is also co-owner of Hammer and Hand, a retail store in Reno.
Jan Gilbert, Board of Directors
Jan Gilbert has lived in Washoe Valley for 21 years. Jan graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics. She is co-founder and the Northern Nevada Coordinator of  the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN). A former elementary school teacher, Jan has worked on economic justice and environmental justice issues at the state legislature for 19 years.
She began her advocacy work in Nevada for the League of Women Voters and served as the President of the Carson City Chapter and as a state board member. Jan has received numerous Humanitarian Awards including the Mike OÕCallanhan Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Truckee Meadows Human Services Association, the Hannah Humanitarian Award from the Committee to Aid Abused Women, Public Citizen of the Year from the National Association of Social Workers and the WomenÕs Role Model Award from the Nevada Attorney General.
She has served on the Department of Human Resources Block Grant Commission for 7 years and was the Chair for two of those years. Jan co-founded the Nevada Empowered WomenÕs Project, a non-profit organization representing low-income women.
In addition, Jan Gilbert was a candidate for the Nevada State Assembly District 26 in 2002.
Jim Pilzner, Board of Directors
Jim Pilzner has been the owner of Nevada Office Machines in Reno for twelve years and has sold office equipment for over 25 years. Pilzner is an active member in the community and currently serves on the Southeast Washoe County Citizens Advisory Board.
He is a former Reno City Councilman and one of the first Reno City Planning Commissioners. He is currently a member of Connected Communities, the Republican Men's Club and the Hidden Valley Country Club.
Pilzner was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in Detroit, where he graduated from Michigan State University. He is married to Sherry Morrey, whose family own the local beverage company Morrey Distributing. Sherry is a former flight attendant and is a figure skater enthusiast. The Pilzners have three children.
Pilzner says it makes economic sense to preserve the area's quality of life. "Reno is a beautiful city and billboards detract from that beauty," he says. "Billboards don't make sense from a business perspective when your community depends on tourism." Pilzner is a one of the directors of Scenic Nevada.
Diane Ronsheimer, Board of Directors
Diane Ronsheimer was born and raised in Pasadena California. She earned her Associate of Arts degree from Pasadena City College and her Bachelor of Science degree from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
She received her California State Teachers Credentials in Biological Science and Physical Education from Long Beach State and in Home Economics from San Jose State. She taught Physical Education in the Anaheim School District until after her son Eric was born.
She was a substitute teacher in Southern California and San Jose for 25 years. She retired in 1998 and moved to Reno in 1999. Her son Eric, a University of Nevada, Reno graduate, is a Software Engineer specializing in high-end audio/video entertainment products. He lives in San Jose.
Reno was an easy choice for her retirement home. She came to love this area during her frequent visits to her husband's family and to her son when he was at the university, and to ski. Despite her attraction and commitment to Reno, there are things that she would like to see improved. She became an active member of Scenic Nevada to become involved in issues that could contribute to making Northern Nevada an even better place to live and visit.
Warren Ronsheimer, Board of Directors
Warren Ronsheimer moved to Reno from California in 1950. He is a graduate of Reno High School and the University of Nevada.
After receiving his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree in 1963, he returned to California where he worked as an engineer and engineering manager in the aerospace industry.
He received his Master of Science degree in 1973. For his last 20 working years, he managed the implementation and retrofit of large-scale satellite mission ground stations and terrestrial data communications systems.
He took early retirement in 1998 and moved back to Reno in 1999. He is the former Vice Chairman of the Scenic Nevada and is now serving as one of its board of directors.
Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, Board of Directors
Lisa Mayo-DeRiso is the President of Mayo & Associates, a business development, market research and strategic planning firm located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her areas of expertise are marketing applications for business development, gaming, government, and hospitality and venture capital consulting.
Mayo-DeRiso has over 24 years of professional experience in market research and strategic marketing, with over ten years specific to gaming and hospitality. Ms. Mayo-DeRiso has been the president of Mayo & Associates for over eleven years.
Her work specific to government agencies seeking market research include projects for the City of Henderson, Clark County, Southern Nevada Water Authority, Clark County Sanitation District, City of Boulder City and the Regional Transportation District. Her work specific to business development includes such projects as World Market Center LLC and the Las Vegas Coffee Company.
Mayo & Associates has been the research firm for the Greenspun Media Group for over eight years; conducting market research for ShowBiz magazine, Las Vegas Life Magazine, and numerous other special projects and research assignments. In 1998, she became the Director of the Gaming Practice in Las Vegas, Nevada for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Under her direction, the practice was involved in several high profile gaming and feasibility studies in Nevada and Michigan. She left after 14-months to direct several large contracts with her firm. Prior to founding her company in 1992, Ms. Mayo-DeRiso was the director of marketing for two major Las Vegas strip hotel/casinos.
Mayo-DeRiso sits on the Board for Lili Claire Foundation, Scenic Nevada, Las Vegas Art Museum, UNLV Boxing Team and the American Red Cross of Southern Nevada; was a founding member of Habitat for Humanity of Southern Nevada; and is active in many community related projects. Known as a community activist, she has been a leader on several issues within Clark County. Most notable are her work to control the expansion of neighborhood casinos, the passing of a more restrictive off-premise sign ordinance for Clark County, the drafting of an ordinance to protect the Red Rock Conservation area from non-compatible development, and efforts to include more restrictive policies for non-conforming zone requests and increased public participation in land use issues.
Mayo-DeRiso's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree in business and economics from the University of Colorado, and a Master's degree in Business Administration from Pepperdine University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in economics and marketing at the Community College of Southern Nevada and the University of Nevada, Reno.
Lori Wray, President
Lori Wray was born and raised in southern California, moving to Reno in 1992. She graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 1978 with a degree in journalism. Lori worked as a staff writer on The Anaheim Bulletin and The Orange County Register and as an editor on The Belmont Citizen near Boston, before leaving in the early 80's to stay home with her children.
She is married to Mark Wray, a civil attorney here in Reno. They have three children Ð Holly, a senior at the University of Missouri, Columbia majoring in journalism; Sam, a sophomore at Boston University; and Jack, a seventh-grader at Swope Middle School.
After visiting the area several times on family vacations, the Wray family moved to Reno 12 years ago, buying a home in southwest Reno that backs up to a beautiful meadow, known as Rosewood Wash. It was the threat of development near her backyard which eventually drew Lori into joining Scenic Nevada.
"After speaking out against what was about to happen, I looked around to see what I could do to make changes and thatÕs when I learned about Scenic Nevada," Lori said. "The beauty of this place is why we moved here and the people in Scenic Nevada are committed to keeping Nevada beautiful."
Bill Young
Bill Young is a native Nevadan who grew up in Northern Nevada and attended the University of Nevada, Reno. He worked for the Nevada Department of Transportation nearly four decades. One of his duties was to act as the state administrator of Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification Project, which set out to preserve the nation's scenic highways from billboards, blight and other visual obstructions.
Young sees his involvement in Scenic Nevada as one of its board members as an extension of his work at the NDOT. "I want to carry out Lady Bird Johnson's vision for a Scenic America," says Young.
Young also served as former trustee for the Carson/Tahoe Hospital, past president of the State of Nevada Employee's Association as well as Western Association of Government Employees. He is past chairman of the Silver City Town Board and chief of that municipality's volunteer fire department.
He has also been active in the Masonic Lodge and the Republican Party. Young has been married to Ardell, a retired librarian for 45 years. The Youngs have one daughter and one granddaughter. Young is retired and enjoys spending time with his family.
Contact Us
Scenic Nevada
P.O Box 32
Reno, NV 89504
(775) 329-3117 (phn/fax)
|
Email Scenic Nevada
|
|
