Our Team
Conserve Nassau Officers
Chair. Margaret Kirkland was a founding member and Board member of Amelia Tree Conservancy (ATC) from 2013 to 2022, serving as ATC Chair for many years. She was also a founding and Steering Committee member of Amelia Island Conservation Network and Conserve Amelia Now! and served on the Board of North Florida Land Trust. She has served on several Nassau County and Fernandina Beach Committees, and has worked with county and city staff to protect trees, conserve land and advance environmental, economic and social sustainability and resiliency.
Margaret is driven by passions for integrity and innovation. Prior to retirement, she applied these passions as professor of English as a Second Language at Montgomery College and at The George Washington University, serving in administrative positions in both institutions. Her research interests related to the culture of written discourse within certain academic communities and intertextuality. She holds a Masters Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education from Georgetown University.
Vice-Chair. Dr. Leonard Pearlstine retired from Everglades National Park in 2019. His education and experience have been multi-disciplinary and directed toward applied ecological modeling in natural systems management. At the Park he led the ecological modeling team for 13 years and acted as technical representative for an exciting variety of university and sister agency ecological research projects ranging from spatial species and community models with hydrologic and climate change forecasting, database development, and Everglades ecosystem monitoring to LiDAR collection and optimization. He has been Affiliate Faculty at the University of Florida (School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences) and Florida Atlantic University (Department of Geosciences). Earlier in Leonard’s career he was project supervisor for studies of the effects of hydrologic alterations on Okefenokee Swamp and Principal Investigator for a national effort to map Florida vegetation cover, potential species distributions and biodiversity statewide.
Membership Secretary. Wende Burdick, whose formal studies focused on psychology and sociology, brings both professional and corporate governance experience to the Conserve Nassau board. In her career as a business coach and trainer, working in six different states, she learned the skills of listening and expression so vital to advocacy in the public policy domain. As a member on the Larsen Fund Board she was instrumental in donating a grove of trees to the City of Fernandina Beach. She is also a member of the Amelia Tree Conservancy Board.
Treasurer. Cheryl Witt is a career accountant who spent 35 years in the banking and financial services industry plus an initial 4 years in public accounting. She was a CPA before recently retiring as a Vice President from Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. based in Jacksonville, Florida. She has a BS in Accounting from the University of Wisconsin and has served in various volunteer accounting roles for non-profit environmental organizations in Florida and Alabama. She has lived on Amelia Island for almost 10 years and is a resident of the City of Fernandina Beach. She is married to her high school sweetheart, Richard Witt and has two adorable fuzzy white dogs, Westley and Buttercup.