Staff
Executive Director
Penny became Executive Director in 2022 after serving as a board member for nearly 20 years. She has a B.A. from Bowdoin College, and an M.A. in Environmental Studies and a J.D. from Vermont Law School. She has been an active member of the Town of Cumberland Lands and Conservation Commission and continues to serve as a liaison between CCLT and the Town of Cumberland. Prior to law school, she worked in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs and for a lobbying firm on Capitol Hill. Penny also serves on the Board of the Maine Conservation Voters and on the Steering Committee for the Maine Land Trust Network. She lives in Cumberland Center with her husband and has three children.
Membership & Outreach Coordinator
Stacey joined CCLT in 2023 after several years leading the communications efforts for the Sebago Clean Waters conservation collaborative. She is also a freelance photographer focusing on food, farms, and gardens. She holds a B.A. in English from Bates College. She lives in North Yarmouth with her husband, dog, and cat, and enjoys almost any outdoor activity, especially biking, Nordic skiing, gardening, and foraging. She is a member of the North Yarmouth Open Space Planning Committee and a Master Gardener Volunteer, currently mentoring a New Mainer at the Yarmouth Community Garden.
Stewardship Coordinator
Jonathan joined CCLT in 2022 after having consulted with local land trusts on stewardship and infrastructure projects. He holds a degree in biology and a 100 ton/sail USCG license, along with many other useful and eclectic credentials. Jonathan is passionate about getting people out into nature. His favorite sideline is coaching the Freeport Middle School Nordic ski team. He lives in Pownal with his wife Kate, their three children, and three sheep.
Board of Directors
Rod Vogel
President
Rod joined CCLT’s Board of Directors in 2015. He also serves as chair of the CCLT Governance Committee and sits on the CCLT Executive, Finance and Membership & Outreach Committees. The campaign to protect the Knight’s Pond Preserve brought Rod closer to the organization as a member. Rod’s passion for conservation goes deep given his longtime professional career with The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, and Maine Farmland Trust. Rod has been actively involved in the nonprofit community in Maine, having served on many local and statewide boards including Maine Philanthropy Center; Maine Association of Nonprofits; Maine Island Trail Association; Maine Planned Giving Council; and Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative. Rod is an avid fly fisherman and all-around outdoorsman, and lives in Cumberland Center with his wife, Lori.
Brian Allenby
Brian lives in Cumberland with his wife and two daughters. He loves nothing more than being outdoors, and the presence of so many amazing open spaces played a large role in his decision to move to this community. In addition to regular adventures with his family, he is also an avid cyclist and Nordic skier. Brian serves on the CCLT Membership & Outreach Committee, and assists with trail work in Greely Woods and at Knight’s Pond.
Brian has 20 years of marketing, communications, and fundraising experience at a wide variety of non-profit organizations and businesses, ranging from the music industry to environmental initiatives. He is currently the Program Operations and Communications Director for Maine Connectivity Authority. He is also an active volunteer at Temple Beth El in Portland, and with various local bicycling organizations. Brian has a B.A. in Political Science from American University.
Leah McDonald
1st Vice President
Leah currently works as the Teen Services Director at Preble Street in Portland, overseeing all shelter and housing programs for youth experiencing homelessness in southern Maine. She is a licensed clinical social worker and has worked with young people for most of her career, first as a wilderness therapy guide and later as a director for Rippleffect, an outdoor leadership and experiential education non-profit. Leah is a Registered Maine Guide and has a passion for exploring the mountains and waters of Maine in her free time. Leah has previously lived on Chebeague Island and currently lives in Cumberland with her husband and two daughters.
Matie Little
Matie is an estate attorney at LeBlanc and Young in Portland, Maine. She recently moved back to Maine with her husband and daughter from Washington, D.C., where she practiced law in the fields of trust and estates and tax-exempt organizations for eight years. Matie received a B.A. from the University of Maine, a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and an LL.M in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center. She is a member of the Maine State Bar Association and the American Bar Association Real Property, Trusts and Estates Section and was selected to the 2016 Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers Rising Stars list. Matie is excited to be back in Maine and looks forward to spending time with her family and enjoying all of Maine’s outdoor activities.
George Bates
George is a retired professor of biology with deep family roots in Maine, and has been a life-long summer resident of Chebeague Island. Members of his family have been Chebeaguers since the early 1800’s; first as year-round islanders, later as summer residents. He earned a PhD in plant biology from the University of Washington in 1977 and, after doing post-doctoral research at Stanford and Yale Universities, took a position as Professor of Biological Science at Florida State University. At Florida State, he conducted research on plant genetics, taught genetics, plant biology and molecular biology, and was active in administration.
After retiring in 2017, George and his wife Carolyn spend half the year at their family home on Chebeague, and half the year in Tallahassee, Florida. George has enjoyed ecological activities in retirement and recently completed a book, Wildflowers of Chebeague and the Casco Bay Islands, and leads plant identification walks around the island. George joined the CCLT Board in 2021 and shares a deep love of the outdoors and nature—and for Chebeague and Casco Bay.
Jeff Bryant
Treasurer
A Maine native raised in coastal New Hampshire, Jeff and his wife Sandy have called Cumberland home since 1995. After graduating from the University of Maine, Jeff’s career eventually brought him back to Maine to run a wholesale packaging distribution business in Portland for 31 years.
Jeff’s pursuits include mountain biking, hunting, skiing, flyfishing, and getting on the water whenever possible. He has been a past board member and treasurer of Cumberland/North Yarmouth Little League and the Greely High School baseball boosters.
Clare Ellis
Clare Ellis has spent her career in publishing—as a journalist, magazine editor, and the editor-in-chief for a number of start-ups. She joined Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps in 2015. She is the publisher of Stone Pier Press, a book publishing company with a focus on DIY environmentalism. Among the books she has published is the best-selling Lawns Into Meadows, which highlights how to cultivate biodiversity in your own backyard. Clare lives on Chebeague Island, alongside her own helter-skelter meadow, and in San Francisco.
Heidi Fitz
Heidi is a 40 year resident of Cumberland. She received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Washington and an M.Ed from Tufts University in Counseling and School Psychology. She has worked in elementary schools, Head Start programs, and community mental health centers in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Over the years, she’s served on the Board of the Portland YWCA, the Maine Women’s Fund, and North Yarmouth Academy. She is happiest outside hiking mountains, walking trails, biking, skiing, and building snowmen with her seven grandsons. She has taken courses at MECA and in her free time enjoys painting and drawing. She and her husband have four children, but have only been able to lure two back to Maine so far.
Allison Foster
Allison, along with her husband and two sons, has lived in Cumberland since 2013. She works for Liberty Mutual Insurance as a Director of Business Lines Economics having forged a career of financial, strategic, and business analysis, and planning leadership roles in the insurance industry over the last 20+ years. Finding community service critical, she served as treasurer for the MSAD51 PTO for four years and a three-year term on the Cumberland Town Council with the last year as Chair. She finds joy in anything active, including running and triathlons, and is an avid baker.
Beverly Johnson
Beverly has been an active member of the Chebeague community since she taught swimming lessons in the 1960s as a young summer teen from Massachusetts. After marrying an islander, she moved to the island and worked for a Portland engineering firm before joining her husband lobstering, and then as a master plumber in his family’s plumbing company. Beverly and her brother-in-law created Chebeague.net, the company that brought internet to Chebeague. In the 1990s, the Johnsons adopted three siblings from Russia and are the proud grandparents of two granddaughters.
Beverly has been a mentor to three generations of island children teaching gymnastics, coaching the track club, and introducing them to the joys of the natural world. As the community’s technology go-to, Bev has used technology and research to teach students about climate change. Bev was a founding member of the Chebeague Recreation Center and CCLT. She was instrumental in protecting Roses Point and public access to it. She also raised the funds to purchase Stockman Island and save it from development.
Diane Lukac
2nd Vice President
Diane is a former shareholder at Bernstein Shur, where she practiced law for over 30 years. While in private practice, she focused her efforts on litigation matters, including complex insurance, commercial, tort and anti-trust cases. She was one of the first women elected to the firm’s Management Committee and was head of the firm’s Hiring Committee for many years. Diane served on the Board of Pine Tree Legal Assistance and on various boards and committees aimed at helping indigent Mainers gain access to justice. She served on the Boards of the Portland Symphony, the Portland Museum of Art and the YMCA. She was a long serving trustee of the Waynflete School and was president of its Board from 2011-2014.
Diane is a former trustee of CCLT. She also served as a trustee of the Freeport Conservation Trust. Diane currently serves on the Board of the Chebeague Island Community Association. She is an avid gardener and birder with an active life list. She is married and has one son. Diane and her husband own and are restoring the Curit Farm on Chebeague, which was one of the last remaining subsistence farms on the island built circa 1847. Diane grew up in rural Pennsylvania and has a passion for farming. Her primary residence is in South Freeport.
Erin McAllister
A Central Maine native and graduate of the University of Maine Business School, Erin has branched out of the state over the years, working for a creative marketing agency in Vermont and for Sundance Catalog’s merchandising and design team in Utah. Two moves and three kids later, Erin and her family, relocated to their beloved home state, eventually nestling in to a beautiful plot of land in Cumberland. Living next to conserved land was how Erin first learned about land trusts and the important work they do. She has been an active volunteer for CCLT since 2020, organizing events, promoting membership, and stewarding connections within the community; she now serves as Co-Chair on the Membership + Outreach Committee. When not stuck behind a computer, or shuttling kids to and from activities, or endlessly preparing meals, Erin can be found be-bopping around the trails in the Rines Forest.
Stephanie Miskell
Secretary
Stephanie Miskell is a long-time resident of Yarmouth and also enjoys time at her cottage on Chebeague Island. She has a BA in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master’s in Social Work from Boston University. Stephanie worked as a social worker in MA and CT and then in the Portland, Maine, school system. Over the years Stephanie has served on the board of the Chebeague Island Recreation Center, Waynflete School in Portland and The Traveling School headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. Stephanie enjoys summer sails with her husband, walks in the woods with her dog, snowshoeing in the winter, trips to the farmer’s market and any opportunity to visit her adult children.
Ayres Stockly
Ayres Stockly joined CCLT in 2020 and is currently on the Major Gifts Committee. He is a past Board Member of the Maine Center for Creativity and the Waynflete School. Ayres is a business partner at Apex Racket & Fitness Club in Portland and resides in Cumberland with his wife, CC.
Geoff Summa
Geoff lives and works as a general contractor on Chebeague Island. Over the past 25 years, with his wife Laura, they have raised their two children in this island community. Geoff has been actively involved with the Chebeague Island and Cumberland communities having served as Fireman/EMT, board member of the Chebeague Recreation Center and Chebeague Island Council. He has also served as a long-time athletic coach and school volunteer. Currently, he is serving on the board of the Chebeague Transportation Company and is a participating member of multiple Chebeague town committees. A graduate of Assumption College with a degree in Mathematics, Geoff has recently received Passive House U.S. (PHIUS) builders certification and is building energy-efficient houses with long-term environmental benefits. Geoff has been involved in outdoor activities his whole life and enjoys hiking, running, backpacking, snowshoeing/winter camping and canoeing.
