Anchorage administrative assistant position changes hands

Barb Penrose
Barb Penrose

Barb Penrose, administrative assistant for the council’s Anchorage office, resigned in June. Penrose had been studying towards a second career as a master sommelier, an expert in wine and other spirits.

Penrose began working part-time for the council in 1998, during her summers off from her 22 year career as a teacher of deaf children. She was originally hired to digitize and catalog a backlog of historical documents the council had accumulated. In March 2010, after Penrose retired from her teaching position, she was hired full-time as administrative assistant for the council. While in that position, she assisted with the document management, made travel arrangements, and assisted with financial matters.

In June, she moved to Brier, Washington to begin work at the Chateau St Michelle winery, and to live near her mother.

Though she loves Alaska and wished she could stay, the area just didn’t offer enough opportunity for an aspiring sommelier, she says.

Natalie Novik
Natalie Novik

Following Penrose’s departure, the council hired Natalie Novik to fill the vacant position. Novik was born and educated in Paris, and has Breton and Russian roots. Novik has a Master of Arts degree in Northern Studies from Sorbonne University in Paris.

Novik volunteered to help clean up after the multiple oil spills that plagued Brittany starting in the 1970’s. When the Exxon Valdez spill occurred, Novik was teaching in New York and already planning to move to Alaska.

Her first job here was to help open the border between Russia and Alaska for NANA Regional Native Corporation. She lived in Kotzebue for five years, regularly commuting between both sides of the Bering Strait. She also did some work in Sakhalin, Russia to help establish oil spill clean-up and prevention teams. She worked for 12 years for the Northern Forum on a wide variety of issues in the North and the Arctic, including oil spills, flooding, environmental and wildlife issues.

She speaks French and Russian fluently, as well as a little Breton.

“I am glad now to have this incredible opportunity to work for RCAC, round the corner from my home,” Novik says.

Valdez resident takes over committee support for council

Nelli Vanderburg
Nelli Vanderburg

The council recently hired Valdez resident Nelli Vanderburg to fill the vacant project manager assistant position. Vanderburg began working for the council in October 2013.

Vanderburg was born and raised in Valdez. She has a degree in English from Southern Oregon University and a degree in web design from Kaplan University. She moved to the Lower 48, but wound up coming back, because she says she missed the scenery and the waters of Prince William Sound.

She worked previously as a library assistant at the Valdez Consortium Library and as a board operator and all-around gopher at Valdez’s KVAK radio.

She now provides support to the council’s project managers and the Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring, Port Operations and Vessel Traffic System, Legislative Affairs, Board Governance and Long Range Planning committee volunteers and their projects.

Vanderburg took over the position left vacant by Anna Carey, who joined the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s staff in September.

New outreach coordinator joins council staff

Lisa Matlock
Lisa Matlock

Lisa Matlock joined the council’s staff on August 12. Matlock brings almost twenty years of experience in coastal Alaska education and outreach to the position.

Originally from southwestern Colorado, she is a “green brat,” a term for kids whose parents work for natural resource agencies, so she bounced around beautiful places in the west during her childhood. Her family moved to Alaska to 1974. They returned to the lower 48 in 1976, but Matlock never got over her time in Alaska.

Always torn between a love for science and a love for communications, she majored in English and minored in Biology at the University of Chicago. She returned to Alaska for graduate school at the University of Alaska Anchorage, specializing in nature writing and science communications. This background led to her nearly two decades of work for natural resource agencies in the state.

After working for several years as a seasonal park ranger in Anchorage, Skagway, and Gustavus, Matlock’s first permanent job was in Seward at Kenai Fjords National Park in 2000. She worked as the park’s education specialist on tour boats in the fjords and at Exit Glacier. She was part of the Ocean Alaska Science and Learning Center, a research and education partnership between the National Park Service and the Alaska SeaLife Center, from its inception.

Matlock was the education specialist for Sitka National Historical Park from 2003-2007. There she interpreted the rich and emotional connections between land and water, people and places. The park’s 100 acres in Sitka includes totem poles in the rainforest and the Russian Bishop’s House. For parts of each summer, Matlock worked on the M/V Spirit of Endeavor as an onboard naturalist for Cruise West. She interpreted the phenomenal marine environment and special communities along the Inside Passage from Ketchikan to Juneau during 8-day cruises.

From 2007-2012, Matlock traveled a huge swath of Alaska’s coast, doing education and community outreach for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Matlock worked in communities both large and small doing wildlife education, including oil spill-related subjects, during this time. Most recently, Matlock worked as an outreach specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage. For the past year she did a variety of communication projects for the relatively new Landscape Conservation Cooperative partnerships.

Matlock is very excited to be working for the council and looks forward to meeting those who live in communities new to her. She also is excited about reconnecting with those she has worked with in the past in a new capacity. Look for her visiting the region’s communities this fall and winter.

Council staff witness lingering Exxon Valdez oil

Council staff visited Eleanor Island in central Prince William Sound this past August to look for residual oil from 1989’s Exxon Valdez oil spill. While several staff experienced the Exxon Valdez spill first-hand, many had never seen the oil other than in photographs and in small sample jars collected each year and displayed in our offices.

The group was accompanied by David Janka, owner of Auklet Charters. Each year, Janka visits several beaches in the Sound where oil can still be found. He documents the locations and collects samples which he shares with the council.
This area of Prince William Sound was hardest hit with oil.

Alicia Zorzetto, who joined council staff in January, says she remembers the spill only vaguely, as she was 6 years old at the time. The images of the dead animals on TV were memorable because they were scary for a young kid. Later, her environmental politics classes in college discussed the spill through an historical lens.

“It’s one thing to study in a classroom, and then to come here and see and imagine what the fishermen and the locals had to go through, it’s like looking into a little part of our dark history,” said Zorzetto.

The experience was a reminder that the council’s mission to promote environmentally safe transportation of oil in Prince William Sound is an important one.

“We live with oil, we need oil, and we appreciate our oil industry and all it does for our state,” said Mark Swanson, the council’s executive director, “but we really have to be mindful that a lot of protection is required to make sure we don’t have another spill because the consequences just don’t go away.”

Janka shows Steve Rothchild, the council's administrative deputy director, where to look for oily sheen, evidence of oil in the sediment below waterline. Photo by Lisa Matlock.
Janka shows Steve Rothchild, the council’s administrative deputy director, where to look for oily sheen, evidence of oil in the sediment below waterline. Photo by Lisa Matlock.
Janka and Gregory Dixon, financial manager for the council, start digging in the new location farther up the beach. Photo by Alicia Zorzetto.
Janka and Gregory Dixon, financial manager for the council, start digging in the new location farther up the beach. Photo by Alicia Zorzetto.
Jars of oil were collected for display in council offices and at outreach events. Photo by Serena Lopez.
Jars of oil were collected for display in council offices and at outreach events. Photo by Serena Lopez.
Barb Penrose, administrative assistant for the council, cleans off a jar of collected oil. Photo by Tom Kuckertz.
Barb Penrose, administrative assistant for the council, cleans off a jar of collected oil. Photo by Tom Kuckertz.
Alicia Zorzetto fills a jar with Exxon Valdez oil. Photo by Jeremy Robida.
Alicia Zorzetto fills a jar with Exxon Valdez oil. Photo by Jeremy Robida.
Oil lingers just a foot under the surface of the beach in some places. The oily water in this photo was just a few feet from the water's edge at low tide. Photo by Amanda Johnson.
Oil lingers just a foot under the surface of the beach in some places. The oily water in this photo was just a few feet from the water’s edge at low tide. Photo by Amanda Johnson.
At a location farther up the beach, thicker oil seeps out of the sediment. Photo by Amanda Johnson.
At a location farther up the beach, thicker oil seeps out of the sediment. Photo by Amanda Johnson.
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