Kathy Patrick planting at the Flint seed orchard in Waleska, GA
Hello!
I’m thrilled to introduce myself as your new president of the Georgia Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation! I was honored to be elected at the annual member meeting at Reinhardt University May 5, 2018. I will be succeeding Dr. John French, who was our very active and helpful chapter president for the past two years. John’s background in plant pathology along with his tireless hours of volunteer activity helped our chapter in many ways. John will continue to contribute his time and knowledge to the Georgia chapter, and he will remain a member of the TACF Science and Technology Committee. Please join me in extending a big thank you to John for his service, as well as for his leadership in the organization.
The 2018/2019 GATACF officers working with me are:
- Erin Maray Coughlin, Vice President
- Jack Rogers, Secretary
- Marty Cipollini, Treasurer
I’d like to thank these officers for their help, time, and valuable input to our chapter and I appreciate their ongoing support in the coming years. And I’d also like to thank them in advance for helping me get up to speed as president!
A bit about my background: My education is in marketing and telecommunications, having graduated with degrees from Michigan State University. My career focused on high tech sales, where I sold software, engineering services, and cloud-based services/applications to large call centers. I retired in 2009 and started my own company, Meals on Heels, a personal chef service. I consider myself semi-retired, with a tilt more toward retirement and less toward long hours! I’m married to Marty Cipollini, with whom I just shared the milestone of 20 happy years of marriage.
My goals as chapter president are to increase our membership numbers, membership activity, and the geography of our membership. Restoration of the American chestnut in Georgia needs the funds, the hands/knees/backs, and talents of many active members. I want to focus on ways to grow our membership numbers and activity throughout the state. I’m still roughing out ideas on how to do that, and have a meeting in early June with TACF staff to discuss ideas. If you have any feedback about our chapter or ideas to attract members in your area, please drop me a note at moc.liamg@tuntsehcag.
In closing, and most importantly, I’d like to thank you for being a member of GATACF and supporting the important work of our chapter. Over the past 12 years, our chapter has facilitated the planting of 13,545 chestnut trees, with 75% of them still alive. WOW! That is an amazing amount of work, an incredible amount of volunteer hours, and a significant amount of donated resources. This progress would not have happened without your support, and for that we are truly grateful. But, there’s more work to be done and achieving the goal of restoring the American chestnut to the wild won’t be reached without the continued support of dedicated individuals such as you. Thank you so much!
Sincerely,
Kathy Patrick
