Current Board Bios
Barry Pilger, President, is a fourth generation Nebraskan, raised in state’s panhandle ranch country. After graduation from the University of Nebraska, he moved to the Bay Area and soon after built his first house in Buckingham canyon in 1977, and constructed his second post fire in 1992. After the 1991 fire, he was asked to join the City of Oakland's builder advisory panel, convened to streamline rebuilding of the north hills. He later served on the city's citizen's Budget Advisory Committee, co-chaired the Oakland Wildfire Prevention District campaign and now serves on the district 's advisory committee. Now broker, principal and Realtor of Stafford Real Estate and Stafford Mortgage, Barry has served as president of the North Hills Phoenix Association, treasurer and member of the Executive Committee for the World Affairs Council of Northern California and treasurer of the San Francisco Merola Opera Program. He has served as head of human resources for several Bay Area firms and has been a general contractor for over 20 years. He is a private pilot and holds an instrument rating. He has been married to third generation Bay Area native Catherine Moss for more than 30 years.
Joseph H. Engbeck Jr., Vice-President, is the author of five books and many other publications about the history and natural history of California and the American West. He has been actively involved in the environmental movement since 1960 and is currently a councilor of the Save-the-Redwoods League and a board member of Save San Francisco Bay Association. He was a trustee of the California Historical Society for six years and helped organize People for Open Space in the 1960s before joining the California Department of Parks and Recreation where he was a writer, editor, and manager of the State Park System's publications program. He is a founder and past president of the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association and co-chair of the Friends of Claremont Canyon.
Marilyn Goldhaber, Treasurer, is a native of Oakland and a graduate of UC Berkeley with degrees in mathematics and biostatistics. She began her love of Claremont Canyon in the 1970s when she and her husband, Nat, were students and resided in a little farm house in the mid-canyon just above Gelston Road. There, the Goldhabers took care of the land and managed to raise a few goats in pursuit of defensible space (and a little fresh cheese). The property eventually sold to the East Bay Regional Park District and the Goldhabers moved down to the lower canyon to Stonewall Road, where they now enjoy a hillside garden full of live oaks and other native California plant species. Marilyn became interested in fire ecology and wildland management after the 1991 Great Fire in the Oakland Hills. She and eleven others formed a neighborhood task force to study the matter and eventually, in 2001, founded the Claremont Canyon Conservancy. Marilyn, is currently the Conservancy's webmaster, newsletter editor and membership coordinator, as well as Treasurer of the Board. Marilyn has triplet sons who are now in college. Her previous professional work, included directing research projects at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, and at the Department of Health in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Mary Millman, Secretary: "I am a native Californian, born in LA where I spent a good part of my childhood in an old stone house out by Twenty Nine Palms. I entered U C Berkeley in the late 1950s and have been a Berkeleyan and a Northern Californian ever since. After my BA and MA, I headed South for several years of Civil Rights work: I taught at Miles College in Birmingham, Alabama and also at Tuskegee Institute while working on voter registration. In those years, I also did a summer assignment on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana through the Association on American Indian Affairs."
"When I returned to Berkeley in 1969, I bought the house on Eton Avenue and planted my redwood tree to commemorate the birth of my son, Matthew. With two other new Moms, I founded (and sought the funding for) the first Child Care Information and Referral Service in the country, Bananas, A Place to Find Playmates, still going strong today. Also in 1970, I met Dave Bohn and began a long writing and publishing collaboration that began with Scrimshaw Press' The Chew Bunch in Browns Park and continued through Norman Clyde of the Sierra Nevada, Darius Kinsey, Photographer, and Darius Kinsey, The Locomotive Portraits, and John William Winkler, American Etcher."
"I entered Golden Gate School of Law in 1974 and passed the Bar in 1977. I practiced in San Francisco for about a decade but couldn't really supress my fondness for hands on social/political work. Through my American antique business I became interested in informal outdoor markets and in 1998 was asked to create a market in United Nations Plaza, downtown San Francisco. San Francisco's Antique and Artisan Market at UN Plaza is now looking forward to its tenth year in the plaza. Along the way, we had to avert a determined drive by the City to pave over Lawrence Halprin's U N Plaza fountain. Our success in saving the fountain earned notice from The Cultural Landscape Foundation."
"For at least 40 years I have been a birder, a hiker, a mushroomer, a native plant devotee, and a general amateur naturalist. My nature bona fides may be traced to 1981 on the Watkins Trail in the Grand Canyon where I broke my leg. I don't plan to do that in Claremont Canyon."
Tamia Marg Anderson: Tamia Marg Anderson had the good fortune to grow up on the edge of a eucalyptus forest at the top of Claremont Canyon where she developed a love of the land. After decades of living in more urban contexts, she returned to the canyon's middle ridge, where her father has kindly allowed her and her husband to live. She received an MFA from California College of Arts and worked for years in film and video production. After earning a Masters in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1982, she began managing a ranch near the Monterey Bay. In the last 15 years, she became involved with caring for her family's land in Claremont Canyon as well as another ranch in the eastern Sierras. Since 1970, she has witnessed up close and personal the devastation and regeneration caused by four wildfires, two of which were in Claremont Canyon. She is currently serving on the Oakland Wildfire Prevention Advisory Board as a representative for District One.
Martin Holden grew up in Southern California, where he developed a fierce love of nature, against the backdrop of the unbridled development of the 60’s and 70’s. He later studied Earth Science at U.C. Santa Cruz, where he met his lovely wife Karen. After college, they lived in New York City, where Martin wrote books on popular science and worked as an editor for various urban publications.
The Holdens returned to California in 1990, just in time to flee the Oakland Hills Firestorm with their new baby in arms. They currently live on Stonewall road, just across from the entrance to the Preserve. Martin writes for a variety of regional and national publications, on subjects as diverse as food, history, travel, architecture, and design. He also deals in artist-designed and illustrated antiquarian books from a small, musty shop (Handsome Books) across the street from the Claremont Hotel.
When not hiking, biking or kayaking in the wild places of the West, Martin loves to roam Claremont Canyon with his two children, Walker and Chloe. In addition to the Claremont Canyon Conservancy, he is affiliated with a variety of local educational and scientific organizations, such as the California Academy of Sciences, the Point Reyes National Seashore Association, U.C. Botanical Garden, and the Mycological Society of San Francisco.
Jerry Kent: Jerry Kent is formerly with the East Bay Regional Park District. He began his career as a park workman in 1962 at Redwood Regional Park, and retired 41 years later as the Assistant General Manager of Operations. During most of his tenure he oversaw fire related vegetation management programs District-wide. He had a front-row-seat during the expansion of the Park District from six parks that totaled 6,000 acres in 1962 to 65 parks and 98,000 acres today. Jerry was instrumental in various blue ribbon panels and consortia. He staffed the 1982 East Bay Hills Blue Ribbon Fire Hazard Reduction Planning Study. He was the Park District’s representative while developing the East Bay Hills Vegetation Management Consortium Fire Hazard Mitigation Program and Plan following the 1991 Tunnel Fire. Jerry also was a principal staff member with the Hills Emergency Forum between 1992 and 2003. Jerry has studied the problem of fires in the East Bay Hills and lead public discussions since 1991 on what might be done to prevent them. Jerry retired from the Park District in 2003, but continued working toward fire safety in the East Bay Hills, serving on the Executive Committee of the Measure CC Campaign that was passed by voters in 2004.
Bill McClung: Bill McClung has lived in Vicente Canyon since 1971. His main career was in book publishing at the university presses in Princeton and Berkeley, where he worked for 30 years variously as advertising copywriter, international sales manager, social science editor, humanities and art book sponsoring editor, and editorial director. He is a general partner of University Press Books/Berkeley, the Musical Offering & Cafe, and the UPB Investment Group. He took early retirement from the University of California Press in 1992 to rebuild the McClung House after the 1991 fire and became interested in vegetation management to prevent urban/wildland intermix wildfires as a member of the Berkeley Fire Commission in 1994-1996. He publishes "News from the Buffer Zone: An Occasional Publication Dedicated to Creating a Beautiful, Biologically Rich, and Wildfire-safe East Bay Hills." He is an owner of Shelterbelt Builders, an open land management and restoration company where he serves as Wildfire Specialist and Project Manager. He manages a three-acre Buffer Zone for the Vicente Canyon Hillside Foundation, an urban forest for the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a 20-acre Tilden Fuel Break Project for the East Bay Regional Park District and several other clients.
Matt Morse: "I moved to this region the day before the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire and have watched the area rebuild from that disaster. From my frequent walks along Claremont canyon, it's clear to me that the canyon is both a unique wildlands resource and a potential fire threat to the bordering lands. Balancing the need to preserve this unique resource so close to our urban centers with the need for safety is indeed a challenge. If 100 years from now this resource still provides habitat for our local species and respite for our ancestors—without being an unduly great fire threat to the neighboring communities—I think the Claremont Canyon Conservancy will have succeeded in its work."
"Although I'm interested in participating in activities that contribute to an improved relationship between humans and the natural world, my work as a programmer for Apple Computer leaves me precious little free time. Thus, I've mainly participated through "checkbook activism", and support a number of organizations that promote ecological issues. Beyond that, I have been co-president of our neighborhood organization (the Vicente Canyon Neighborhood Association), and have helped organize Earth Day celebrations, pulled weeds in Garber Park, participated in practice fire drills with my neighbors, and taken CORE emergency response training through the city of Oakland."
Tim Wallace: "Born outside of Chicago, I've always been involved with natural resources and the policies and actions revolving around them. Ranched and logged for six years in Oregon (where my father was born) - then turned to academics at Oregon State University, UN Reno, Purdue and have been at UC Berkeley since 1963. I've worked in the White House (Sr. Economist on the Council of Economic advisors) on agricultural matters, and was Director of California's Department of Food and Agriculture (the agency responsible for all legislation and regulation concerning the state's food producers and many other aspects of the food system). I've done consulting abroad in Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Far East. Being directly active in the community based Claremont Canyon Conservancy affords me an opportunity to do something that needs doing and will help restore the Canyon to the prestigious position it deserves".
Dick White is a professor of electrical engineering at Berkeley, specializing in sensors. He has co-authored two technical reference books and an introductory textbook. In spite of its risks, he lives on Panoramic Hill because of its proximity to the open spaces of Strawberry and Claremont Canyons and the view. Watching the 1970 and 1991 Berkeley-Oakland fires from atop the Hill motivated him to help organize neighborhood emergency preparedness activities, to serve on the Berkeley Fire Commission for 8 years, and now to be a member of the Berkeley Disaster Council. In the mid '90s, working with the Berkeley Fire Department, he wrote and produced the short video "Fire and the Urban-Wildland Transition", which was aimed at informing people about the importance of the transitional zone and dispelling the notion that a protective buffer zone must be sterile and ugly. His two sons are salaried environmentalists, one an expert on fish and the other on birds.
