Bob Boucher

President

Bob serves as founding President of the Superior Bio-Conservancy and is President and owner of Still Meadows, LLC. Bob lives in Wisconsin but spends time at a family cabin situated between old growth forests and Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His interest include protecting and restoring keystone species in ecosystems and bioregional landscape linkages for protection on a global scale. He has an MS in Water Resource Management for the UW Madison with an emphasis in ecosystem management of watersheds.

He became a "Beaver Believer" when he realized the role this keystone species plays in the health of our river's hydrology and their significance to biodiversity. He serves as an advisor to the Beaver Institute, founded Milwaukee Riverkeeper and served as Executive Director of Wisconsin’s oldest land trust (The Cedar Lakes Conservation Foundation). Bob has traveled to over 60 countries exploring wild and tame places. He has worked in Alaska as a fishing, kayak and naturalist guide and led wilderness trips for Camp Manito-Wish. He is a member of the Birch Leggings club and has summited Denali in Alaska. Bob and his wife, Mary, share a love of nature, wildlife, hiking, biking, skiing, and their dogs.

Mary Washburne

Founding Member, Board of Directors

Mary is a family medicine physician providing health care services to the Milwaukee Brewers, students at Marquette University, and others. She serves as Medical Director for Milwaukee Job Corps and the Medical and Laboratory Director for the IBBI plasma center. Dr. Washburne spearheaded and implemented one of the first integrative medicine programs in Milwaukee at Columbia-St. Mary’s. When working for Doctors Without Borders in 1996 and 1997, she oversaw medical services for three refugee camps of up to 30,000 people.

She has a lifelong relationship with and love of the Laurentian Forest Province via her family's cabin on the shores of Lake Superior. With her husband, Mary is an avid outdoor enthusiast and supporter of the environment. She recognizes parallels between the health of the environment and the health of humans and sees SBC as a healthcare plan for this region of our planet.

Paul DeMain

Founding Member, Board of Directors

Also known by his Ojibwe name Skabewis is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and of Ojibwe descent. He is a member of the Bear Clan, Midewin and Chidewegan Societies. DeMain is now a retired business owner living with his family in Hayward, Wisconsin. He summers on historic Madeline Island. DeMain is the former CEO of Indian Country Communications, Inc., and publisher of the national Native newspaper "News from Indian Country". He recently retired after over 40 years being affiliated with Indigenous led media including program development for IndianCountryTV.com, (ICTV) First Nations Experience (FNX) and special projects for the Inter-Tribal Agriculture Council.

​He is a former President of the Native American Journalists Association and incorporated the largest coalition of working Journalists in the world, UNITY: Journalists of Color in 1994.
DeMain was Indian Affairs Policy Advisor to Governor Anthony S. Earl from 1982-1986, Vice Presidential Campaign Manager Nader/LaDuke Green Party campaign in 2000 and has served on numerous profit and non-profit board of directors ranging from the Little Rock's Sequoyah Research Institute at the University of Arkansas, Governors Interstate Indian Council, WOJB 88.9 FM Public Radio, Denver's Spirit of the Sun Youth-Business and Development Board, to the Inter-Tribal Maple Syrup Producers Cooperative. He previously chaired several organizations including the Navajo Times Publishing Company (the country's largest Native stock-owned publication) Native American Education Technologies, Inc. (NAET) of Hayward, WI;  and is a former chair of the environmental organization Honor the Earth.
DeMain currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Superior Bio-Conservancy, Friends of Madeline Island Museum, Mooningwanakaaning non-profits and works with Chequamagon Bay area residents associated with Communities United by Water.​

Andrea Knutson

Member, Board of Directors

Andrea is an Associate Professor of English and the Environmental Humanities at Oakland University in SE Michigan. She’s a scholar and teacher of early American literature, specializing in how the intersections of settler colonialism and plantation ideologies and materialisms register in colonial texts, whose legacies of white supremacy, enslavement, ecocide, and dispossession remain with us today. She’s also the settler descendant co-chair of Oakland’s Native American Advisory Committee, which oversees the development of the Native American Heritage Site on campus as an inter-Tribal food sovereign, educational, and ceremonial cultural space.

​Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota and currently living in SE Michigan, she’s spent her life in the GreatLakes region paddling, skiing, backpacking, and fly-fishing -- in love with the sounds of loons, whip-poor-wills, spring peepers, and cicadas. However, she realized that she didn’t know her beloved Great Lakes as well as she thought, when a pair of beaver made a dam in the bio-preserve of her campus, challenging the university to learn to coexist. Since their arrival, she’s realized the depth of our ecological amnesia surrounding them and their life-giving brilliance, as well as their role in making some of the most important conversations we can have as a culture and as a society happen, simply by making a wetland.

Max Rock

Founding Member, Board of Directors

Max Rock brings technical expertise and a deep passion for conservation to the Superior Bio-Conservancy's Board of Directors. Growing up sailing in the Apostle Islands, he developed a profound appreciation for the natural beauty and ecological importance of Lake Superior, which inspired his career in geospatial science and environmental stewardship.
As an Operations Specialist and Account Manager at Orbital Sidekick, Max leverages GIS and remote sensing technologies to provide impactful solutions for environmental monitoring and asset management. His professional experience includes key roles at Planet, Maxar Technologies, and the NASA DEVELOP National Program, where he contributed to projects focused on biodiversity screening, landscape connectivity, and water resource management.
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At Superior Bio-Conservancy, Max focuses on protecting keystone species and advocating for the creation of wildways—expansive, protected pathways that reconnect fragmented public lands in the Northwoods of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Michigan. With advanced expertise in GIS Development and Cartography, Max combines cutting-edge technology with his lifelong dedication to preserving and restoring natural ecosystems.

Della Brown

Member, Board of Directors

Della Brown is an Experience Designer and Midwest native with a deep passion for understanding how humans and nature coexist. She began her career in the environmental sector at Tradewater, where she developed a carbon reduction program and community for small businesses, contributing to the company’s destruction goal of over 5 million tons of CO2e. It was through building a community united by a common goal that she discovered her passion for creating impactful experiences. Since then, she has led initiatives to improve digital accessibility and engagement, designing solutions that increased government benefit utilization and helping global organizations embed people-centricity into their work. 


Della’s passion for conservation and the natural world continues to drive her design practice, focusing on the connection between healthy ecosystems and thriving communities. Growing up on Lake Michigan and spending summers along Lake Superior’s North Shore nature is a cornerstone of her life and inspires her commitment to creating experiences that foster a connection to the natural world. 

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