Board of Directors

Castalian Spring, TN

Jay Cude spent 35 years in the medical device industry where he was involved in the design, manufacture and sale of disposable medical devices for cardiology, radiology, CT, MRI, and general surgery.

Jay was Founder and CEO of Coeur, Inc., a medical device company that manufactures and sells finished medical devices to the global imaging market. The business was sold in 2012.  Prior to this, Jay was Group Vice President of the DeRoyal Plastics Group and CEO of Hospital Disposables, a family business also involved in the U.S. hospital market.  Jay recently retired as Director of Strategic Planning for ITW Medical.

Jay was formerly a Director, Officer, Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Washington DC based Plastics Industry Association. SPI is a non-profit trade association representing over 1,000 businesses involved in the manufacture and sale of plastic manufacturing equipment, raw materials, and products. Jay is also past Chair of SPI’s Healthcare Division and past Chair of the SPI National Certification Program, an industry training program.

At present, Jay serves on the Advisory Board of a private medical device company.

Jay is a graduate of the Emory School of Business Administration, has a wife and two grown children, and resides outside of Nashville, TN.  He enjoys hunting, fly fishing, gardening, traveling, and spends time managing the family farm in west Tennessee.

Lewisville, NC

Betty became interested in the American chestnut tree when chestnut stumps were found on property her family purchased. She has had a lifetime love of biology, and the outdoors.

After earning a BS in Zoology from UNC-CH, she worked as a chemist, and as a System Engineer for IBM. While raising a family she became a volunteer with many organizations including serving as Board Chair of the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern NC, and the Greenfield Academy (Wilson, NC) as well as many years of “PTAs” and “Team Moms”. She was a Girl Scout Leader for 8 years while also serving on the GS Council Board(s) in NC and committee member of the four GS Council Realignment (merger) committee.

Betty and her husband John Allison, have three adult children. They planted their first American Chestnut Foundation seeds and saplings in the 1990s. They also have fruit trees and blueberries.

Decatur, GA

Until her recent retirement Becky held the position of Chief Development Officer at The Carter Center (TCC), having joined the staff in 2011. The Carter Center is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1982 by former President Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Rosalynn Carter to advance human rights and alleviate suffering among the world’s poorest people. As CDO, Becky led and managed a team of twelve professional and administrative staff. The Unit is responsible for cultivating and stewarding individual donors to raise annual financial support for the Center’s Health and Peace Programs.

Prior to joining The Carter Center, Becky served as Director of Federal Agency and Congressional Government Relations for the 10 state chapters in the Southeast United States for The Nature Conservancy (TNC). TNC works in 70 countries and the 50 US states conserving the lands and waters on which life depends. While at TNC Becky built, led, and served as spokesperson for some 40 diverse nationwide organizations known as the Forests in the Farm Bill Coalition which resulted in expanded program eligibility for private forest landowners, and established statewide forest assessments and plans in the 2008 Farm Bill. She was also responsible for relationships with Regional offices of US Forest Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Southern Group of State Foresters, along with other multi-state/multi-discipline partnerships to influence resource management.

Previously Becky worked in government relations roles at Columbia Gas Transmission, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and served as director of West Virginia Independence Hall, a National Historic Landmark museum. Her international service includes election observation missions in Guyana, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Nepal, Liberia, and Mozambique, and as a US representative of Women for Peace in support of Palestinian Women during a Palestinian election.

Becky also volunteers with Habitat for Humanity International, with work in Haiti, the Mekong Delta, New York City, Washington, D.C., Annapolis, MD, and Dallas, TX, Edmonton, Alberta, Memphis and Nashville, TN. Becky further served as a volunteer with CARE International, and on the Board of Directors, West Virginia affiliate of Friendship Force International, directing the Russian leaders program and groups in Germany, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

Becky holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from West Virginia University. She learned early in life the cultural and environmental significance of the American chestnut and her interest in forestry and environmental conservation has been a constant throughout her career and in her personal interests.

Becky grew up in West Virginia and moved to Georgia when she and her husband Chip were married.

Groton, MA

Dr. Mandy Cromwell is a director of preclinical at Vertex Cell and Genetic Therapies, a Boston area biotechnology company working to develop a cure for type 1 diabetes. She holds an undergraduate degree in biology from Stetson University and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has over 25 year of experience working in R and D in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

Mandy is a longtime resident of Groton, MA and a member of the Nashua River Watershed Association, a local conservation organization. Avid cyclists, she and her husband Duane are also active volunteers with the Friends of the Nashua River Rail Trail.

Dr. Deborah Delmer is Professor Emeritus of Plant Biology at UC Davis. She has held faculty positions at Michigan State University, The Hebrew University, and UC Davis. In 2004 she received from the American Chemical Society’s The Anselme Payen Award in recognition of excellence in the science and chemical technology of cellulose.

Professor Delmer also served as President of the American Society of Plant Biologists and in 2004 she was elected to membership in the US National Academy of Sciences. From 2002-2007, she served as Associate Director for Food Security for the Rockefeller Foundation where she was involved with grant making and policy relating to the role of biotechnology in developing world agriculture. Now retired, Delmer serves on a number of advisory boards and as a consultant to foundations, academia, industry, and governments on developing world agriculture issues surrounding biomass production.

Deborah was also Program Director for Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development, BREAD (2009-2010), jointly funded by the US NSF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Deborah has been involved with TACF since 2017.

Takoma, MD

Bruce Levine is a PhD student in Plant Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he studies the host-pathogen interaction between chestnut blight fungus and chestnut.  After 20+ years of membership and volunteer work with TACF, Bruce chose to retire from a 26-year diplomatic career in the U.S. Foreign Service and devote his efforts to chestnut restoration.

Potomac, MD

A nationally recognized expert in science education, Dennis Liu is currently Vice President of Education for the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and the Half-Earth Project. Previously, he directed the production of educational media at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, working with scientists, educators, graphic designers, animators, and filmmakers to produce an array of educational products that have had a lasting impact on science education. Dennis has managed teams devoted to assessing and assuring the educational impact of media, including building professional learning programs and peer communities.

In his role as Executive Director of HHMI’s Tangled Bank Studios he was executive producer and editorial advisor on over a dozen film projects for theatre, broadcast television, Large Screen, and digital science programs aimed at the general public. Dennis trained in neuroscience and genetics, earning a PhD in biology from the University of Oregon. Following postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington, he held a faculty position in the Department of Genetics.

Youngstown, PA

Lewis is an avid chestnut restoration enthusiast and has several plantings on their property. He has been a TACF member for more than 20 years.

Lewis was raised in Charlotte and earned degrees in architecture, regional planning and law at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill. He served in the US Army with the Airborne Engineers from 1972-1974. He moved to Pittsburgh after law school in 1983 to practice at a firm centered on large-scale public/private law. He then joined PNC Bank in 1991, in increasingly senior roles where he retired in 2010 as manager of a commercial loan division. Lewis has served on the Western Penn Conservancy (WPC) board and chaired the fundraising subcommittee where he helped lead a $50 million campaign. This campaign raised money for WPC’s 4 programs, including the architectural and conservation projects at the Falling Waters complex outside Pittsburgh. In addition to the WPC, he serves on the Westmoreland Land Trust board.

Lewis and his wife Kate have four children and eleven grandchildren and enjoy skiing, tennis, golf, and wilderness hiking.

Dunn Loring, VA

Ambassador Catherine A. Novelli is a Senior Advisor at Shearwater Global, a strategic consulting firm.  She also serves as President of Listening for America, a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to forging a new vision of U.S. international trade engagement. She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where she served as a Centennial Fellow (2018-2019).

Cathy previously served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (2014-2017) where she promoted economic reform and open markets for U.S. products and services. As Under Secretary, Ambassador Novelli spearheaded the first-of- its-kind Our Ocean movement, which, during her tenure, resulted in $10 billion for Ocean conservation and has become a continuing global effort. She also launched the Global Connect Initiative, an innovative partnership with governments, multilateral development banks and the private sector to connect 1.5 billion people to the Internet.

Novelli spent seven years as Vice President, Worldwide Government Affairs at Apple Inc where she headed a multinational international team responsible for Apple’s government relations and public policy. Prior to her position at Apple, she was a partner in the law firm of Mayer Brown International. She had a long career at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, rising to Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe & the Mediterranean, where she coordinated U.S. trade and investment policy for Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa. She took a leading role in many of the most important U.S. trade negotiations in those regions, including free trade agreements with Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain, and Oman.  As the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, she negotiated most of the bilateral trade and investment agreements that underpin our economic relationship in that region.

Cathy currently serves on the Board of the National Wildlife Federation and the Advisory Board of the Pristine Seas Initiative of the National Geographic Society. She was also named an Ocean Elder, and has received numerous honors and awards, including the State Department Distinguished Service Award and the International Trade Woman of the Year Award.  She is a graduate of Tufts University, holds a law degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Laws from University of London.

Charlottesville, VA

John is an adjunct professor who has taught Advanced Spatial Analysis every Spring Semester since 2010. For most of those years John was a practicing GIS professional, managing geospatial projects for the Virginia Geographic Information Network.

Since retiring  in 2017 John keeps busy by teaching part-time, traveling and volunteering for non-profits interested in forest conservation, applying his knowledge and experience from his Forestry PhD studies and 20+ years of applied forestry research.

New Hope, PA

Jim studied landscape architecture and horticulture at Temple University’s Ambler campus after a 32 year career as a partner and CPA at Ernst & Young. His interest in trees evolved into a focus on restoring the American chestnut to southeastern PA, where he has planted TACF B3F3 trees in local nature preserves and is working on expanding the program to a local university.

He most recently retired as a township Supervisor in Solebury PA after six years of public service, and was a founding director of the Aquetong Watershed Association.

Jim is known as @TreeStrategist on Twitter with 5,000 people following his posts on trees, conservation and urban forestry.

He brings a strong interest in ecological restoration, tree planting, finance, social media, community engagement and strategy to the TACF Board and the Pennsylvania/New Jersey Chapter where he has been a member since 2018, and currently serves as Vice President.

Arlington, VA

Anna is founding partner and president of Neon Literary, a literary agency with offices in New York and DC. Over the course of her many years in book publishing, she has sold multiple New York Times bestsellers, major book-to-film deals, and foreign translations in more than 50 languages.

Anna believes that there’s no more powerful tool for social change than a good story. It’s why she works in publishing; it’s also why she dedicates most of her TACF volunteer work to promotion and outreach, spreading the story of the American chestnut across the country and world. An active member of TACF’s Virginia chapter, she manages the chapter’s social media and has spent lots of time in the state’s many germplasm conservation and breeding orchards.

Prior to founding Neon Literary, Anna spent nearly 15 years as an agent, foreign rights manager, and developmental editor at DC’s Ross Yoon Agency. A graduate of Columbia University (B.A., English) and Oxford (Master’s, English), she lives with her husband and three children in Arlington, VA.

West Lafayette, IN

Barb enjoyed a 37-year career in the US Forest Service (USFS). She spent the first two decades with the National Forest System, Region 9, on the Hoosier and Ottawa National Forests (NF), serving on the Hoosier NF at the district level and the Supervisor’s office as the Planning and Information Management Staff Officer, and on the Ottawa NF as the Kenton District Ranger.

Transferred to the Northeastern Area, State and Private Forestry (NA) in 1998 – served Area-wide for the Area Director (resource analyst), the Forest Stewardship Program, and eventually as Group Leader, Office of Information Management, finishing at the St. Paul Field Office for NA as the Director’s Field Representative, with oversight of S&PF programs for seven Midwestern state forestry agencies and their partners, including tribes in Urban Forestry and Forest Stewardship, and Forest Health Protection for all forest lands in the seven state area. Barb served as a collateral-duty trained federal mediator (and later resolving official) for US Department of Agriculture agencies east of the Mississippi River. She received the USFS Chief’s Award in 2005 and 2013.

In retirement, Barb serves on the Board of the National Museum of Forest Service History, as well as TACF.  She and her husband, Mike recently moved to West Lafayette, Indiana from Powell, Ohio where she served as an adult volunteer at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.