Meet our board of directors. These individuals passionately volunteer their time to promote a healthy Lake Wingra through an active watershed community.
FOLW Board of Directors (2024-2025)
Emmy Kriehn (Chair)
Emmy joined the board of directors in 2023. She has a master’s in landscape architecture from the Pennsylvania State University and an undergraduate degree in liberal arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. She grew up exploring the rocky beaches of Kodiak Island, Alaska, where she was endlessly fascinated by the tiny aquatic worlds in every tidepool. Many moves later, she found her way to Madison, Wisconsin and is happy to call this place home. She fell in love with Lake Wingra right from the start, and learning about life under the waves always makes her day. Emmy’s profession is firmly rooted on land (landscape design and planning) and she adores playing in the dirt and watching native plants at work. But while plants are great, she believes that water and the health of our water bodies is the connector that brings us all together. In her free time, Emmy enjoys long runs around Lake Wingra, strong cups of black tea, good books, and watching her cats as they watch birds.
Lisa Grueneberg (Co-chair)
Lisa joined the board of directors in 2023. She enjoys stand up paddleboarding and fishing in Lake Wingra, observing wildlife and monitoring lake conditions, and has been the Clean Lakes Alliance deep water monitor for Lake Wingra since 2021. She has a background in computer science, and has spent the years since retiring from her job as a software developer at Epic enjoying the lake and getting more involved in the community around it, including volunteering as the communications and history chair with the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood Association.
Peter Gascoyne (Treasurer)
Peter joined the board in 2023. He is an economist who worked with a wide range of industries, from health care and manufacturing to telecom and insurance. A number of projects he worked on involved measuring the economic and environmental impact of proposed environmental or safety regulations, natural resource damage assessments, and comparisons of the environmental impact from using disposable vs reusable products. He received a master’s degree in economics from San Francisco State University and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School. A passion for matters of water came from his Peace Corps experience in Senegal, living in a village with virtually no water.
Kyungdoe (Doe) Han (Secretary)
Doe joined the board in 2024. He has experience in hydrology/hydrogeology. His research focuses on the interconnectedness of surface water and groundwater, with an eye towards ecological impacts and applications in renewable energy and sustainable development. Doe’s background spans advertising, weather forecasting, and deep learning-based environmental data science. He holds a PhD in Hydrology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where he honed his expertise in hydroecological modeling.
Ben Becker
Ben Becker joined the Friends of Lake Wingra Board in 2024. In his regular day-to-day work, Ben works in conservation, focusing on agriculture and water quality. Ben also volunteers at the UW Arboretum and loves engaging with community members during the restoration work parties and enjoying this unique feature of the Wingra watershed. Ben also enjoys hiking, kayaking, and raising bees here in Madison.
Adrianna Gorsky
Adrianna joined the board of directors in 2022. She is a third year PhD student in the Freshwater and Marine Science program at the Center for Limnology (CFL). Much of her research is focused on small urban waterbodies, such as stormwater ponds and Lake Wingra. She is particularly interested in bridging her Lake Wingra research with the broader community and applying long-term data collected from community groups like Friends of Lake Wingra and the North Temperate Lakes LTER to her analysis. As a member of the outreach committee at the CFL, she has a background in engaging with the broader community on lake topics. Her Lake Wingra research is also ongoing and across seasons and can see herself especially contributing to the mission actions of monitoring & research and engaging citizens. For fun, she enjoys recreating on Lake Wingra by paddling and fishing.
Grace Huddleston
Grace joined the board in 2023. She is the Lead Horticulturist for the Attic Angels Community, formerly working as a horticulturist with Epic Systems. She holds a BA in Urban and Regional planning from Miami University and is a proud Western College scholar. She has always been fascinated with the interactions between humans and the natural and built environments. Her scholarship focused on interactions between land use, transportation and conservation. Growing up in Ohio she was fascinated with wetlands (bogs and fens are so cool!) but did not have much real world exposure to wetland ecology until she moved to Madison in 2019. Although her knowledge rests primarily with terrestrial ecology, Grace is always looking to learn more about the wild world of aquatic life! Having spent most of her childhood in a swimming pool, she aspires to become an open water swimmer. In her free time Grace is probably found gardening, dancing, or watching birds with her husband and sometimes with their cats from their kitchen window!
Megan Ludwigson
David Ortiz
David joined the board of directors in 2023. He is currently a PhD candidate at UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology. He completed his B.S. (‘17) and M.S. (’19) both in environmental science at Iowa State University where he studied wetlands and shallow lakes. His current work focused on the spatial differences of water chemistry found in the surfaces of lakes. He is involved with organizations on campus that help to connect underrepresented undergraduate students with mentors such as SACNAS and McNair. David enjoys recreating within Lake Wingra’s watershed, gardening, hiking, and camping throughout the state of Wisconsin.
Toni Tiemann
Toni Tiemann (she/her) joined the Board of Directors in August 2022. She moved to Madison three years ago from Boston and has been living along Lake Wingra ever since, enjoying the paddling, birding, and running the area has to offer. Toni specializes in marketing, working full-time as an Account Director at a Gupta Media, a full-service digital media agency. Toni also comes with hands-on non-profit experience, working for two years at Farm Aid as the food and farm organization’s volunteer coordinator. She also worked at the Appalachian Mountain Club, an outdoor recreation and conservation non-profit for which she assisted with paid marketing and programming efforts. Toni is deeply committed to equity and inclusion, recently completing two programs with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce: the Inclusive Managers Certificate and the Transformational DEI Certificate.
ADVISORS TO THE BOARD
Katy Bradford
Denny Caneff
Matt Diebel
Anne Forbes
Tim Kuhman
Tyler Leeper
Jim Lorman (co-founder of Friends of Lake Wingra)
John Magnuson
John Nicol
Rebecca Power
David Thompson
Ben Yahr