BOARD OF DIRECTORS

FRANCESCA DEMGEN

FOUNDER & PAST PRESIDENT
Francesca is the founder and former president of the Friends of San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. As a wetland scientist working in San Francisco Bay for the past 40 years, she has designed tidal and seasonal wetland restoration sites, monitored fish, bird, and plant growth at these new wetlands. Her involvement with the Refuge began while she was a core member of the community group that kept Cullinan Ranch from growing houses instead of waterfowl and then helping the USFWS to acquire and finally restore the 1,463 acre property.

JUSTIN BODELL

PRESIDENT
Justin has worked in the environmental restoration and conservation field since moving to the north bay in 1998. He is passionate about introducing people to kayaking, fishing, and hunting on the refuge. A board member since 2017, he is grateful for the opportunity that volunteering for the Friends has provided him to give back to the refuge. Justin is a Landscape Architect and lives in Santa Rosa with his wife and two young children. Besides hunting and fishing, he enjoys carving duck decoys, tying fishing flies, and playing banjo.

Photograph of Naomi Feger
NAOMI FEGER

SECRETARY
Naomi currently works to protect and restore water quality in the Bay. She is an avid supporter of ecosystem restoration and bringing back wild habitats in California. She has spent the last 25 years working in the environmental field. One of her biggest accomplishments has been participating in the remediation of the former Hamilton Air Field, making the wetland restoration there a reality. She looks forward to continuing the great partnership between the Friends of the San Pablo Bay Refuge and the Refuge. Naomi lives in the East Bay.

FRAN MCTAMANEY

BOARD MEMBER
For years Fran was the environmental education coordinator for the SFBNWR Complex. During her last years at the Refuge, the Friends published its first children’s book on the Salt marsh mouse, an endangered species. This story, “A Home for Salty” was used in our education programs. We found an illustrator and author to make it into a picture book and thousands of these books were given to elementary teachers over the years.  As a board member Fran handles the purchases and reprinting of the book.

PAUL AMATO

VICE PRESIDENT
Paul is a career environmentalist and has worked to protect and restore wetlands for all his professional career. Following almost a decade at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board where he worked on several projects in the south bay, Paul worked for the San Francisco Estuary Institute studying the impacts of human land use on tributaries to the bay. Since 2007, he has been with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he has focused on protecting aquatic resources, with much of his time working in the Wetlands Program promoting impact avoidance, minimization and compensatory mitigation for wetlands and streams. Paul previously served on the board for The Watershed Project, a Bay Area nonprofit working to improve the health of the bay. He has a BA and MA in Physical Geography from San Francisco State University where he focused on the impacts of land use on streams. Paul has lived in the Bay Area since 1990 and resides in Petaluma with his wife and son. He enjoys cycling the back roads of Sonoma and Marin Counties, fly fishing, and hiking as often as possible.

PHOTOGRAPH OF STEVE CARROLL
STEVE CARROLL

BOARD MEMBER
Steve is a founding board member of the Friends of San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. He has focused his professional career on conserving and restoring wetlands throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Steve works for Ducks Unlimited, a non-profit wetland conservation organization. He has been working to conserve and restore wetlands and associated habitats for over twenty years throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and coastal California. He founded Ducks Unlimited’s Bay Area office located in Vallejo and supervises the engineering services. Steve has a Bachelor of Science in environmental engineering from Humboldt State University and a Master of Engineering Management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Steve resides in west Marin County with his wife and daughter and enjoys sailing, fishing, biking, and hunting. b

Photograph of Bruce King
BRUCE KING

TREASURER
Bruce is a consulting CFO to small and mid-size businesses.  He holds a degree in Economics from Colgate University and an MS in Accounting and an MBA in Finance from New York University.  He obtained is CPA while at Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) and left to join a family business which he ran for seven years.  Since then he has held various executive finance and operations positions in a range of industries.  In 2015 he started Kingsbrook Advisors to provide fractional financial and strategic consulting expertise, recognizing the challenges faced by small to mid-size businesses that can’t justify a full time CFO or COO but need the expertise to help put the process and people in place to provide a sustainable, scalable infrastructure and meaningful financial reporting to drive informed decisions.

Bruce has been a member of the Novato Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, the North Bay Leadership Council, was Committee Chair for Scout Pack 85 in Novato and remains a scout leader trainer for the BSA Marin Council. Bruce grew up in Marin and developed an understanding of the importance of conservation hiking and fishing on Mt. Tamalpais and in the Sierras with his grandfather who taught him to “always leave it a little better than the way you found it”. He and his two teenagers live in Novato and spend every chance they get in the outdoors hunting, fishing, camping and exploring.