Natalie grew up in Ohio and attended Denison University where she received her B.S. in Biology in 2016. She then worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA member for Star of the Sea Foundation – a hunger-relief nonprofit in the Florida Keys – for three years. After completing her service as an AmeriCorps member, she decided to go back to school and graduated in 2022 from the University of Miami with a Masters in Marine Conservation. In 2023, she moved to the Oregon coast with her husband Nick, and two cats, Zap and Luna. Since living in Oregon, she has worked as a Seasonal Park Ranger at Devil’s Lake State Park in Lincoln City and enjoys mushroom foraging, camping, hiking, reading, and any water-related activities in her free time. She is looking forward to working with the Council and community to improve the health of south Tillamook County’s watersheds.
Raised near the Mississippi River headwaters in northern Minnesota, Maija has joined the Watersheds Council to run our bimonthly water quality monitoring program and handle volunteer, event and media coordination. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Macalester College and worked crew seasons with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota & Iowa and Sea Education Association before receiving a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship grant to study women-led water stewardship efforts in rural riverine and coastal communities around the world. Based on Oregon’s North Coast for the past two years, she remains interested in stories that connect people and preserve shifting waterscapes, and looks forward to serving the Nestucca, Neskowin and Sand Lake Watersheds.