Team

Jennifer Norwood

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Jenny is a career marketing professional with a passion for the protection and restoration of open spaces. She brings a wealth of experience in communications, marketing, and community engagement to the Flora, most recently as the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) Director of External Affairs and Partnerships. In that role, Jenny served as a liaison between the array of friends and partners stewarding public land and the dedicated professionals at DCR, in addition to managing the agencies public outreach and community affairs. Jenny and her husband Jonathan recently relocated to beautiful Nelson County.

Jan Hodges

ADMINISTRATION

Jan joined the Flora Project in 2011 to prepare illustrations for publication of the print Flora; since then she has served as recording secretary for the Flora Board and is currently working in the Executive Office. She was a member of the Education Committee, creating the module “Basic Botany.” She has a B.S. degree in biology from the College of William and Mary and studied at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. She is an artist specializing in environmentally themed conceptual art and is pursuing her Extension Master Gardner’s certification.

Caitlin Cyrus

PRESIDENT

Caitie is an environmental consultant who specializes in designing native pollinator–friendly habitats for solar facilities through the Virginia Pollinator–Smart Solar Program. She also performs rare, threatened, and endangered plant species surveys and wetland delineations. She has a B.A. in biology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and an M.S. in biology from the College of William and Mary. She is an active member of the Virginia Native Plant Society and the Virginia Association of Wetland Professionals.

Conley McMullen

VICE PRESIDENT

Conley is a professor of biology at James Madison University and director of the JMU Herbarium. His classes and research focus on the systematics, pollination biology, floristics, and conservation of plants in the eastern United States and the Galápagos Islands. He has served both the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society and the Virginia Academy of Science as president, the Association of Southeastern Biologists as secretary, and the Society of Herbarium Curators as editor of The Vasculum. He is an honorary research associate of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a member of the science advisory board of Galápagos Conservancy, and an elected governing member of the Charles Darwin Foundation. He is an elected fellow of the Virginia Academy of Science and the Linnean Society of London, and he is a leader at the West Virginia Wildflower Pilgrimage.

Sally Anderson

SECRETARY

Sally served as President of the Virginia Native Plant Society for nine years and continues on the board while also serving on the board of the Piedmont Chapter. She has volunteered at the Nancy Larrick Crosby Native Plant Trail at Blandy Experimental Farm for many years and is a Virginia Master Naturalist. She often gives talks on the Flora of Virginia and has been instrumental in the Flora Project’s education efforts, including creation of its education modules, which are available to the public on this site, under Education. (Photo: Karen Hendershot)

Irvine Wilson

TREASURER

 Irv worked for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation for almost 40 years, beginning in the 1980s with a focus on natural history interpretation in Virginia State Parks. From the late 1990s until his 2021 retirement, he worked on land protection and conservation planning for the Virginia Natural Heritage Program. He developed an enthusiasm for plant identification while studying biology at Davidson College, and explored plant physiological ecology while earning a master’s degree in biology at Virginia Common­wealth University. Irv was a volunteer for the Flora at the beginning—sharing ideas, reviewing materials, and contributing photographs. In retirement, he hopes to complete a photographic herbarium of Indian Springs Farm, the family property on the Chickahominy swamp where he has spent most of his days. (Photo: Lynn P. Wilson)

Ryan Huish

Ryan is an associate professor of biology and the herbarium curator at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. In light of his background in field botany and sociocultural anthropology, his research interests incorporate an interdisciplinary approach to addressing basic and applied questions in ethnobotany, ecology, and plant conservation. His efforts are coupled with cultural conservation and community development, using plants as a common thread. His research topics include Appalachian ethnobotany and forest farming of native medicinal and edible plants. He and his family are stewards of Appalachian Cove Forest Farm and Homestead, where they practice various agroforestry principles. (Photo: Katie Huish)

Jordan Metzgar

Jordan is the curator of Virginia Tech’s Massey Herbarium. He received his B.S. in biology from Cornell University and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks for his dissertation on the evolution of the parsley ferns (genus Cryptogramma). His work at the Massey Herbarium involves researching the ecology and distribution of various ferns and other southeastern U.S. plants. He also runs an active outreach program, sharing with the community his botanical knowledge and enthusiasm for natural history. He became entranced by ferns when an undergraduate and pursued a career in botany to further that passion. His favorite plant is the Walking Fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum). (Photo: Jake Sirevaag)

Ashley Moulton

Ashley works for the Capital Region Land Conservancy as a land conservation specialist in Richmond. In addition, Ashley founded Moulton Hot Native Plants, sustainably raising Virginia natives and consulting with landowners on natural resource management practices. For her master’s degree at Virginia Commonwealth University, she worked on one of the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research study sites on the Virginia Coastal Reserve, studying how increased nutrient availability (expected with climate change) alters plant-community composition in a coastal grassland. As an undergraduate, she studied wetland seed-bank dynamics from seed collected at the VCU Rice Rivers Center. Ashley is the publicity chair for the Virginia Native Plant Society. (Photo: Max Schlickenmeyer)

Ann Regn

Ann retired in 2021 as communications manager with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. In 2002, the Chesapeake Bay Founda­tion named Regn Environmental Educator of the Year. She was formerly director of Virginia environmental education with DEQ and is a former board member of the Virginia Native Plant Society and founder of its Jefferson Chapter and is active with the Rivanna Master Naturalists. Ann is using the Flora app to restore a right-of-way on her property. (Photo: Pete Ziminski)

Joey Thompson

Joey is a Vegetation Ecologist with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Natural Heritage Program which oversees 67 Natural Area Preserves totalling approximately 70,000 acres. He is a regional expert on the diversity and current condition of vegetation communities throughout the Commonwealth, conducting field work to inventory and update data on rare and high-quality communities and works with public land holding agencies, private landowners, and land developers to protect areas with significant natural heritage resources. He has degrees in Biology from the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University. Joey collects seeds during field work to propagate in his yard in Richmond, where he was born and raised and currently lives with his wife (expecting a girl on Halloween 2024), son, and beagle. (Photo: Clay Robertson)

Andrea Weeks

Andrea is a professor of botany at George Mason University and director of its Ted Bradley Herbarium, in Fairfax. At Mason she teaches undergraduate courses in plant biology and conducts research in angiosperm systematics. Since 2014 she has led a National Science Foundation–funded initiative to digitize Virginia herbaria, which has made more than a quarter million herbarium specimens discoverable through the SERNEC (SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections) Symbiota portal. She is a past president of the Society of Herbarium Curators and a member of the Virginia Botanical Associates, which operates the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora. During 2017–2019, she served as a program officer for NSF’s systematics and biodiversity science cluster. (Photo: Evan Cantwell, GMU Creative Services)

Eli Wright

Eli is an environmental consultant working as a professional wetland scientist and a certified professional wetland delineator. He has a master’s degree in environmental science from Christopher Newport University, where his research focused on the success of planted trees on wetland-mitigation sites in the Virginia Piedmont. He is a project lead in wetland delineations, wetland permitting, and protected species assessments. Before his graduate studies, he worked as a horticulturist at the Norfolk Botanical Garden. He also serves on the executive board of the Virginia Association of Wetland Professionals.