Rynda Clark, Co-Chair

Rynda Clark is passionate about wilderness, women, healing, and education. She directed the Department of Continuing Medical Education (CME) at UC San Diego for 17 years and was responsible for the needs assessment, planning, execution, and evaluation of national and international medical education programs.

After relocating to Central Oregon in 2007, Rynda began hiking with women in wilderness areas and rekindled her love for wild places that began when she was growing up in New Mexico. She shared, “…wilderness allowed me to connect with my health and spirituality in a way that nothing else did. I wanted to protect it for our future generations”.

Rynda was attracted to Broads because of her love of wild things, but also for the humor, wisdom, and humility she witnessed from Broads members and staff. She volunteered to be the Co-lead for the newly forming Central Oregon Broadband chapter, where she helped build a shared leadership model that allows opportunities for many passions and visions. She also completed the Oregon Master Naturalist program to learn more about environmental issues in her region. Although Rynda stepped down from a Broadband leadership role, she continues active engagement with her chapter, and has join Broads’ Board of Directors.

Micky Ryan, Co-Chair

Micky Ryan

Micky spent her law career representing low income tenants with housing problems and her spare time in the outdoors of the Pacific Northwest. She came to Oregon from Ohio for law school and after experiencing the mountains, forests, and coast of Oregon, she never went back. She had heard about the Great Old Broads for years, and just as she was retiring, a local chapter was forming in her home base of Portland. For four years, she co-led the Cascade Volcanoes Broadband and continues to be actively involved locally in addition to serving on the Broads’ Board of Directors.

Antonia Daly, Secretary

Antonia Daly

Antonia, a native New Yorker, has been fascinated with wilderness and western land issues for several decades. She began hiking and camping in wilderness and public lands with her young children in 1972, recognizing the spiritual value imparted by spending time in wild nature. A recently retired high school teacher at an independent school in New York City, she instituted the Environmental Studies course in 1996, incorporating wilderness education and trips into her classes. She chaired the Sustainability and the Building and Grounds Committees for the school, advocating green practices. She has joined Great Old Broads to extend the voice, concerns and stewardship of the Western US to citizens of the East. She is currently writing a children’s book on climate change.

Anne Heikkila, Vice Chair

Anne Heikkila grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and developed her passion for the outdoors by skiing, hiking, and camping throughout California. She received her degrees in Speech Pathology and Audiology and relocated to Georgia for a professional opportunity in the cochlear implant industry. She and her husband Bill raised their children in Georgia, splitting their time between the Atlanta suburbs and the southern Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia.

Since retiring, Anne has devoted her time and energy to the protection of our public lands and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Georgia Forest Watch. In addition to her environmental work, Anne enjoys spending time with her family and friends, creating glass art and painting in her studio, and exploring the wild places in the southeast.

Suez Jacobson, Treasurer

Suez Jacobson

Suez came to Broads through her son, Tim Peterson, who worked on the Broads’ Healthy Lands project. Trained as an economist at the University of Utah, Suez has worked both in the corporate world as a financial economist doing research and as an academic teaching at public and private universities in the US and  abroad.  Suez retired as a professor from Regis College in Denver in May 2018,  where her courses included economics, finance, and global environmental courses titled “Wilderness: A Story of Passion and Perseverance” and “Consumption, Contentment, & Climate Change.”

In late 2018, with the support of Great Old Broads, and working with Dave Devine, a digital media specialist at Regis’ Dayton Memorial Library, Suez finished a film “Wild Hope” which has screened at film festivals, conferences, churches, universities, and conservation organization events. “Wild Hope” tells the story of our deep spiritual connection to the natural world, a connection that has the power to rewire our brains, take us back to our deepest roots, and change how we think and act in a world needing our care. For more on “Wild Hope” visit the website wildhopefilm.com. With a lifetime of hiking, camping and backpacking adventures in the Wasatch Mountains near her childhood home in Utah, and in her home now in Colorado, she brings a passion for wilderness grounded in the issues and her ongoing study of the wilderness canon.

Mary O’Brien

Mary O’Brien is a botanist who has worked for toxics reform, environmental law, and public lands conservation organizations for 40 years. In December 2021, Mary left her 17-year position as Utah Public Lands Director for Grand Canyon Trust, a Colorado Plateau regional conservation organization. She founded Project Eleven Hundred in January 2021 as a small nonprofit working to end permitting of honey bee apiaries on Forest Service and BLM lands on the Colorado Plateau, because the hive-based, non-native honey bees out-compete native bees and transmit diseases to them.  Mary enjoys working with various Broadbands on public lands livestock grazing issues, as well.

Pip Coe

After spending more than thirty years living in the Intermountain West, Pip recently moved back to western North Carolina where she first started working in the outdoor industry. Since then, Pip‘s career in the outdoor industry has taken her all over the world as an outdoor education instructor on both water and land, and in organizational leadership. 

Most recently, Pip led the fundraising efforts for National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as the Alumni and Development Director. During her 16-year tenure she successfully managed and completed two multi-million-dollar capital campaigns, launched a $30 million comprehensive campaign, and increased annual giving year over year. Throughout her time at the helm of development, she never stopped working in the field as a NOLS instructor both domestically and internationally. She appreciates the ability to work with people in an extended backcountry setting enabling them to connect to the wilderness and appreciate its many aspects.

When not paddling a river or hiking a trail somewhere you can find her in the depths of a remodeling project, pursuing the local junk stores to find the next piece of furniture to reupholster, or cooking up a storm in her kitchen.

Anna Lee Vargas

Anna Lee Vargas is a sixth generation San Luis Valley Native born and raised in Manassa, Colorado. She attended Adams State University where she received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology with an emphasis in Social Welfare and Spanish, Liberal Arts.

Anna Lee describes herself as a natural born advocate and is passionate about protecting the land, water, and people of the San Luis Valley. She loves working with kids and feels fortunate to have worked with youth at her previous employment, Conejos Clean Water, as well as a Prevention Specialist for the San Luis Valley Community Mental Health Center (now the San Luis Valley Behavioral Health Group) and Parent Partner for the Monte Vista Migrant Headstart. She is proud of her professional accomplishments but considers her greatest accomplishment is being a mama to her wonderful daughter.

Laura Hodge

Laura has always been rooted in community by being a voice for collaboration and making a positive difference for those around her. She took on an effort in 2014 to protect the mountains around her Coker Creek home through the Tennessee Wilderness Act. There, Laura led a diverse coalition of stakeholders through five years of non-stop lobbying to see the bill pass in December of 2018, and 20,000 acres of the Cherokee National Forest became designated as wilderness.

Her diverse background includes place-based tourism work, community development, and passing legislation to protect the natural landscape. Art is a passion (and a frustration), and having always been an artist at heart, she is always creating. Laura served as a Director of Tourism and focused on community leadership on various boards and as chairman of the Coker Creek Heritage Group before turning her attention to growing a successful art and fine craft gallery (Coker Creek Gallery) as an accomplished nature and adventure photographer.

With a passion for big skies, big mountains, and public lands, Montana has always held a special place for Laura and her husband, Bill. In 2019, they relocated to the Flathead Valley for Bill’s work with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation and are thrilled to call the Swan Front and Bigfork home. They love to camp and explore, on foot and in kayaks, usually with a dog or several, their son, JJ, and always way too much camera gear.

LD Delano

LD Delano’s love affair with the outdoors began with family vacations traveling in a station wagon and sleeping in a canvas tent. Most trips included visiting at least one national park and plenty of fly-fishing.

Spending most of her life in “the big, square states out West” fed her love for outdoor adventures and spawned a desire to keep the land healthy. Leading backcountry trips for a youth organization for many years allowed her to share the importance of protecting wild places with a sizable audience of both kids and their parents.

LD is winding down her “day job” as an architect specializing in healthcare facility design. When she discovered Broads, she was inspired to lend her business and leadership skills, experience serving on various boards, as well as her infectious enthusiasm to further the organization’s mission. She also looks forward to spending more time backpacking, biking, traveling, watercolor painting, and nature journaling.