Karen Garst is co-founder of Sustainable Silverton. Responding to a City Council resolution, she co-authored the Energy Plan for the City of Silverton which the City Council adopted in 2019.

Before retiring to live in Silverton, Karen served as Executive Director of the Oregon State Bar, Executive Director of the Oregon Community College Association, and former field representative for the Oregon Federation of Teachers. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in French from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota as well as a Master’s in French and a PhD in Education from the University of Wisconsin.

She and her husband moved to Silverton in 2016. She has been involved in a number of volunteer activities including Sheltering Silverton which serves the homeless. She wrote a book regarding small town homeless in 2020 which she offers for free at smalltownhomeless.com. She served on the board of the Pudding River Watershed Council and is currently the president of the Abiqua Heights Homeowners’ Association.

1933 - 2022   Charles was a co-founder of Sustainable Silverton.  He also co-founded Power Oregon, a clean energy think tank in Portland.  Charles has been at the center of public policy since 1963 when he was asked to resolve a long-standing dispute between California and the City of Long Beach over a land grant along the coast.

During his public career he served as consultant to the Senate Governmental Efficiency Committee in California, the Joint Tidelands Committee, the National Energy Board in Canada, the Select Committee for Public Employee’s Collective Bargaining, and as Aide to Governor Edmund G. Brown.  After retiring from public service in 1980 he served as director for two foundations, created a non-profit dental HMO, established a school for learning disabled children, and traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, India, and Japan to serve as an economic consultant and policy advisor.

He and his wife Jeanne lived in Silverton where they raise chickens, collect rainwater, and grow biodynamic fruits and vegetables.

Elyce Hues is a Silverton Union High School graduate with a B.A. from the University of Oregon in Political Science and International Studies. Elyce has worked in the green building sector for the past decade and a half; previously, her profession was in community services and engagement around environmental health and justice. Elyce has studied and worked abroad in Germany and Mexico, and she will always jump at the chance to converse in German or Spanish! (Bitte, sag hallo! / Por favor dime hola!) Elyce moved back to Silverton in 2010, where she lives with her two children. She co-founded Sustainable Silverton under the mentorship of Charles Baldwin in 2016, and is honored and delighted to this day to be part of the bright, caring group of people who make up Sustainable Silverton. Elyce is also a local musician (performing under the stage name, Elyce Tyler, for her dearly departed soul-dog). 

Teresa Foster is a relative newcomer to Silverton, having moved with her partner, Jim, from Colorado to Oregon in August 2020 and to Silverton in November 2020.   She has been an outspoken advocate for renewable energy and sustainability, and was a driving force in the environmental activism movement in Colorado. In 2012, she worked tirelessly on a team that successfully banned fracking in the city of Longmont, CO.

Teresa worked as an administrative assistant at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); event organizer for the NCAR Explorer Series (public outreach); program analyst intern with the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office ‘Greening Government’ program; Solar Decathlon project manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); event/project coordinator for the nonprofit, Clean Energy Action; and, graphic designer/coordinator for Sustainable Revolution Longmont’s 2015 “Youth of the Earth” Festival. Her graphic designs have graced both print and web media.

Teresa is a graduate of the Naropa University MA Environmental Leadership program; earned a permaculture design certificate in 2013, and a project management certificate at Colorado State University in 2014. 

 Kelley Morehouse is fifth generation Oregonian, and moved to Silverton in 1980.

She is a mother of three, a grandmother of two. She has worked on non-profit boards over the last thirty years in different capacities, but most extensively with the Silverton Poetry Association. 

Over the years, she has taught Creative Arts to pre-school children, Spanish to English speaking children and adults, English to students of other languages, and finished her career teaching Intercultural and Interpersonal Communication courses.  

She enjoys writing poetry, and the history of her family in early Oregon, when not traveling or working with the Silverton Sustainable Coalition.

Megan Benedict was inspired to join the board of Sustainable Silverton when she learned how much the group had accomplished in a short time and saw the organization’s potential to have a very large positive impact on the community.

Megan’s interest in sustainability has been life-long, starting in the 1970’s when as a teenager, she convinced her parents to begin recycling their household waste. She was a co-founder and Executive Director of Anchorage Alaska’s Green Star Program, a voluntary waste reduction and energy conservation program initiated by the city’s Chamber of Commerce in 1989 in response to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Megan also spent many years working in facilities management applying energy conservation strategies in large commercial buildings.

She and her husband retired to Silverton in 2012 from Alaska. They live in the Silverton Hills with their dogs and chickens and are helping with stewardship of an organic vegetable and flower farm (Olde Moon Farm) whose products are available at the Silverton Farmer’s Market.

Darrel is a recent addition to the Silverton Community.  He saw the energy of local Sustainable activity and brought his Project Management and Information systems experience to assist Sustainable Silverton as the Website developer.  Darrel was born and mostly brought up in the Midwest.  He received a BSE in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, as well as his MBA in Operations Research from the University of Michigan.  For a number of years he managed Software development, and project management consulting from an Ann Arbor MI base.

Darrel spent the next twenty years as an internal Subject Matter expert in capital project management, and related information systems development for General Motors Tool and Die.  During that time he led projects in the United States, Germany, Korea, as well as Brazil.  GMs realignment to enable a renewed pivot to EVs provided an opportunity for Darrel to exit GM; head to Oregon (to be closer to family), and pursue his long time passion for sustainability.  

Eric is a tenured horticulturist with 30 years of experience growing healthy trees and educating on the many benefits trees provide, on an international level.  He is an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist. He has overseen all aspects of nursery production and is responsible for growing over 100 million nursery trees.

In 2004, Eric moved his young family to Oregon where he served as Greenhouse Manager and Production Manager at Heritage Seedlings & Liners Inc for 15 years. There he raised his sons and was active in the community serving on the board of his son's school.

He joined Trella as 2019 began and lived in Shanghai until the pandemic hit. Now living in Silverton, Oregon, while working for Trella, he is trying to preserve and restore the native Oregon white oak habitat within the town and is active in Sustainable Silverton. He is a longstanding member of the International Plant Propagators Society.

Representative works: Lessons from an ice storm, Oregon White Oak in Silverton, A Recovery Plan for Silverton' Oregon White Oaks, Ice Storm in the Willamette Valley - the HPSO Quarterly Summer 2021