Team

Executive Director

Jenny Norwood 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.

Administrator

Jan Hodges joined the Flora Project in 2011 to prepare illustrations for publication of the Flora. Since then, she has served as recording secretary for the board and is currently working in the Executive Office managing fund-raising efforts. She was a member of the Education Committee, creating the “Basic Botany,” module, one of the seven educational videos available on the Flora website. She earned at B.S. in biology from the College of William and Mary and studied at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, where she was on the Marine Advisory Services’ education staff. She is an artist specializing in environmentally themed conceptual art and is pursuing her Extension Master Gardner’s certification.

President

Caitlin Cyrus 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.

Vice President

Conley McMullen 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. His many accolades include: Served as president for the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society and the Virginia Academy of Science; a member of the science advisory board of Galápagos Conservancy; an elected governing member of the Charles Darwin Foundation; and, a leader at the West Virginia Wildflower Pilgrimage.

Secretary

Sally Anderson 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.

Treasurer

Irvine Wilson worked for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation for almost 40 years, first as a state park natural history interpreter before moving to protection and conservation planning for the Natural Heritage Program. He developed enthusiasm for plant identification while at Davidson College and explored plant physiological ecology earning a master’s degree in biology at VCU. In retirement, he hopes to complete a photographic herbarium of Indian Springs Farm, the family property on the Chickahominy swamp.

Jordan Metzgar 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 is a member of Virginia Botanical Associates and runs an active outreach program, sharing 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).

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

Will Nelson is the Digital Content Strategist at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, where he leads storytelling, marketing, and digital engagement. He is also the founder of Will To Plant, through which he teaches hands-on workshops across Virginia on plant and mushroom cultivation and can often be found vending at the farmer’s market. With a background in content creation and a passion for biodiversity, Will supports the Flora of Virginia Project’s marketing and outreach efforts, helping to grow diverse audiences and inspire a new generation of botanical enthusiasts.

Joey Thompson is an environmental scientist with the Natural Resources Program at the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. He has been a naturalist for as long as he can remember, developing a specialty in field botany, earning biology degrees from the College of William and Mary and VCU. He is the education chair of the board of directors of the Virginia Native Plant Society, a teacher at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, coauthor of several recent botanical publications, and a volunteer for individuals and organizations that seek botanical input on local projects. Joey is a native of Richmond where he lives with his wife, children, and beagle. 

Andrea Weeks is a professor of botany at George Mason University and director of its Ted Bradley Herbarium. 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, enabling a quarter million herbarium specimens to be 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. During 2017–2019, she served as a program officer for NSF’s systematics and biodiversity science cluster.

Eli Wright is an environmental consultant, certified professional wetland delineator and principal at W3 Environmental Solutions. 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.

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