Board of Directors

Our deeply committed board of directors meet monthly on Saturday mornings. Each serves a one-year term, renewable without limits each fall. If you are interested in joining our board or volunteering on a finance, fundraising or nominating committee, please be in touch.

Alexas Kelly

Alexas Kelly is currently a Contract Specialist with GSA’s Design & Construction Division for Region 1. She earned a B.A. in Environmental Analysis and Policy from Boston University, and interned with the MA Department of Environmental Protection researching, and writing a petition to the MA Legislature justifying the necessity for an Environmental Justice Bill. After graduating from B.U. she worked in the private sector as an Information Technology Consultant, and as co-owner of a green building company. During this time she renovated her 1889 home, featured on the NESEA Green House Tour, that showcased – the reuse and repurposing of materials, spray foam insulation, and integrated thermal solar for heating and electricity. While serving as Green Living Director for the Seacoast Energy & Environmental Design Coalition (SEED), she started Sustainable You, specializing in Zero Waste Consulting. She created – a sustainability curriculum, “Get Started Going Green” for an adult education course and a proprietary sustainability presentation for children and parents called “3 is The Magic Number: Reducing, Reusing, & Recycling” that she presented to audiences up to 500 people, including WGBH in Boston. She has published two articles entitled “Party On! Teaching your Children the Value of an Eco-Friendly Celebration” and “Reusable Bags: Paint them, use them, love them.” Alexas lives in Topsfield, MA with her three “green” kids who love to swim, surf, camp, dig in the mud, and spot wildlife. She is also a girl’s lacrosse coach and coed flag football coach. She believes in a holistic and effective approach to educating, inspiring, and empowering people toward sustainable living and businesses practices.

Kerry Lagueux

Kerry is a Lead Knowledge Analyst within the GeoAnalytics Group at the Boston Consulting Group.  Kerry provides location-intelligence through data, visualizations, and analytics aimed at addressing place-based questions to help our client address the most challenging business problems.  Prior to BCG, Kerry led the Marine GIS Group at the New England Aquarium where he researched conflicts between the North Atlantic right whale and human activities in the ocean, patterns of use in the context of marine spatial planning in the Gulf of Maine, and monitored satellite-tagged rehabilitated sea turtles in the wild. Locally, Kerry has served on Newburyport’s Open Space Committee. He has served on the board at BCNS since November 2010.

Sally Milliken

As the parent of young children, Sally is deeply committed to helping her own and other young people connect to and enjoy the natural world so that they realize their day to day actions can make a real difference.  She is an active participant in her children’s schools, including co-founding and co-chairing the Newbury Elementary School Reycling Committee.  She also is a Co-Chair of the Newburyport Montessori School Parent Association.  She has worked for several nonprofit environmental organizations, most recently at the Quebec-Labrador Foundation in Ipswich, Massachusetts.  She has an undergraduate degree in biology and a master’s degree in environmental studies.  She is thrilled to be a board member of BOAT CAMP Nature School and is always eager to help link more members of the community with the amazing efforts of the organization.

Thomas Murray

Tom has a diverse background in education and the outdoors. He is a former high school principal, school administrator, and teacher in both public and private schools. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with a Natural Resources and Political Science degree, Tom began a teaching career in Denver, Colorado, working with gifted and talented students in an experiential based school. From there, he went on to earn a Masters Degree in Education, with a focus on special education and advanced graduate courses in Leadership. For many years Tom taught as a special education and outdoor educator in a small-specialized school for students with learning disabilities.  During that time , Tom also worked with environmentally focused organizations such as the Audubon Society.  While taking care of his young family, Tom currently works as an independent educational consultant providing services to both school districts, parents and students.  Tom specializes in leadership development, organizational management, and learning disability issues.

Kate Yeomans, Executive Director and co-founder

Kate grew up on the water messing about in family-owned recreational boats along the salt marshes behind Plum Island and sailing the coast of Maine as far Downeast as Roque Island with her grandfather before heading to sea as a deckhand on the Newburyport Whale Watch boat Capt. Red at age 12, a seasonal job she held for more than ten years. During this time she attained a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license.

In May 2011, Kate earned  a Master of Arts degree in Environmental Education at UNH. In August 2011, Kate and Rob were personally selected among applicants worldwide to participate in an Associate Mentoring program where together, and individually, they were mentored by Nicole and Jon Young, an internationally acclaimed author, tracker and mentor. Today, Kate is continuing this journey through personal mentoring with Jon Young and Mark Morey through the 8 Shields Institute, and participation in their many offerings to enrich her understanding of creating high quality, meaningful nature connection programs for our community.

Before jumping feet first into BOAT CAMP Nature School’s growth and development, Kate spent 15 years working as an award-winning investigative maritime journalist who wrote about the sea and the people who worked and played upon it. She is the former editor of Embassy Cruising Guides, a series of four bi-annual guides spanning the cruising waters from Canada to Alabama. She has a BA in Journalism (minor in marine biology) from UNH (1995) and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College (1999). Her award-winning work appeared in Boston Magazine, Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, Cruising World, Commercial Fisheries News, National Fisherman, Offshore, Professional Mariner, Robb Report, Voyaging and others. She is the author of the nonfiction book Dead Men Tapping: The End of the Heather Lynne II, published by McGraw-Hill in 2003.

Capt. Rob Yeomans, Education Director and co-founder

Capt. Rob has worked aboard the Erica Lee for 33 years, 21 of those as captain. He holds a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license, and has decades of experience fishing for a variety of New England species in the Gulf of Maine.  In fall 2007, Rob and Kate formed BOAT CAMP Nature School in order to further pursue their passion for marine education by expanding nature-based education opportunities for all ages, tots to teachers, in the greater Newburyport area. Rob has been the owner/operator of the Erica Lee since 2005. When not at sea, Rob, teaches Anatomy & Physiology, AP Biology, and Marine Biology at Newburyport High School, where in 2011 he became chair of the science department. He taught biology at Lynn Classical High School from 1996 to 2005.  He earned a BA Biology (1996) and a MA in Teaching Biology from Salem State (2000). During the summer of 2009, Rob also worked as a high school curriculum development consultant for a National Marine Fisheries education project on the Atlantic Sturgeon.

Rob was a 2009 recipient of the Swasey Grant for curriculum development at Newburyport High School. In November, he traveled to Monterey, California, to study humboldt squids. This trip included tagging the giant squids with Stanford University’s Dr. William Gilly and his staff from the Hopkins Marine Station. Rob returned with squid to be dissected with his high school marine biology students, as well as great connections and ideas to bridge the east and west coast ecosystems for his students at N.H.S. and at BOAT CAMP. You can read about his adventure and see pictures here!

In late fall, 2010, Rob received a second action research Swasey Grant to fund an trip to Tahiti in early January 2011 with Sea Education Association of Woods Hole’s Colleagues SEA Semester for one week. While there, Rob sailed aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans. During the 2011-2012 school year Rob was awarded his third Swasey Action Research grant to study wildlife tracking with the great folks at White Pine Programs in Cape Neddick, Maine.

In April 2012, in recognition of his life-long passion for educating kids about the outdoors and the sea, both in the formal classroom and outdoors aboard the Erica Lee, Salem State University honored Rob with a “Friend of the Earth Award.” Prior award recipients include “A Civil Action” attorney Jan Schlictman, Congressman John Tierney and Governor Jane Swift.  Rob is the first public school teacher to be honored with this award.

Rob and Kate met in first grade at Newbury’s Woodbridge School, and later become  high-school sweethearts at Triton Regional High School, where they first studied marine biology and oceanography together. Kate and Rob were married in 1996 and have two young sons, with whom they share their love for boats and the sea. Rob and Kate have owned the F/V Erica Lee since April 2005.