2024 FSPP Officers and Committee Members
Jenny Aurielle Babon moved to Arlington in 2015 and has been a Massachusetts resident since 2004. Born and raised in Cebu, Philippines, she came to the US for a PhD in Biomedical Sciences and is now works in R&D for a pharmaceutical company. Spy Pond Park is her favorite spot in town, and she enjoys taking walks, impromptu picnics and viewing sunsets with her family in the park. Her other interests include singing with the Boston College Filipino Community church choir, running, cycling, amateur photography and trying out different cuisines (both cooking and eating). Jenny has served as Publicity Chair for FSPP since February 2019.
Lauren Bonilla is a social scientist and educator who has lived near Spy Pond in East Arlington since 2019. She received her PhD in Geography from Clark University and is a Lecturer in the Anthropology Department at MIT, where she teaches classes on culture, technology, and human-environment relations. Lauren spends quality time around Spy Pond every day, such as birdwatching on the Route 2 pathway and cleaning up trash and debris on storm drain grates near the pond's shoreline with her storm drain-loving toddler, Hugo. She enjoys learning about the history of Spy Pond as a former site of ice harvesting to its current place in a complex urban ecosystem. Lauren is especially interested in contributing to efforts to help make Spy Pond and Spy Pond Park an inclusive public space where everyone feels welcome and a sense of belonging. She began serving as FSPP VP of Communications and Outreach in September 2021.
Megan Chrisman grew up in Southern California but still managed to become enthralled with the seasons when she moved to Boston as a college freshman and has stayed in the area ever since. She is happy to now be an Arlington resident and considers Spy Pond one of her favorite walking destinations. In addition to serving as the FSPP Recording Secretary beginning in 2021, Megan works in educational technology. Her interests include reading, languages, and slowly learning the electric bass guitar.
Jamie Ciocco has run Trendy.com, a technical consulting and software design company, since 1999. He programs interactive museum installations and designs custom software for clients across the country, including The Smithsonian, McGraw-Hill, the JFK Library and Museum, Hubbell Lighting, Inc., Waters, Inc., and the Georgia Aquarium. Prior to 1999, he was Lead Multimedia Programmer at SilverPlatter Education, where he programmed award-winning educational CD-ROMs and wrote pioneering eLearning software for the web. Jamie received his BA in English & American Literature from Harvard in 1994. He returned to Harvard from 1997 to 2004 to act as Assistant Senior Tutor and Drama Tutor in Residence, running a 90-seat theatre and publishing the House Facebook. While at Harvard, he also programmed an early online Facebook that was referenced in the movie The Social Network. He has been a FSPP VP for Communications and Outreach since 2008 doing newsletter design and layout.
Anna Doctor was born in Boston but spent most of her childhood in Nashville, TN. She earned her degree in Art History in 2018 from Colorado College, an institution that practices "the block system" or taking one class at a time. In between classes, Anna had the opportunity to explore the state and surrounding area through backpacking trips which developed her deep love and admiration for the outdoors. After graduating from college and thru hiking the Colorado Trail, Anna worked in curation at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. She moved to Massachusetts the fall of 2021 to live closer to her family, all residents in eastern Massachusetts. She also returned to school and received a certificate in Graphic Design from Boston University in May 2023. Anna currently lives near Alewife station and loves to bike to Spy Pond Park on the Minuteman Trail. When she is not enjoying the surrounding green areas, Anna does communications work for a small creative business, climbs, and captains two ultimate frisbee teams. She is excited to serve as the new Bulk-Mailing Coordinator November 2023.
Karen L. Grossman is from a small-town northeast of Pittsburgh, PA. She earned a B.S. from Syracuse University, an M.Ed. from Boston University and worked for 35 years as a speech and language pathologist in the Wilmington, MA Public Schools with children in preschool through high school. Karen has lived in Arlington since 1974 and currently resides on the shore of Spy Pond near the park. She enjoys her view of the pond every day and has been involved with the FSPP since 1992. She's been President of the organization since she retired from full time employment in 2004 and served on the Mystic River Watershed Association Board for 10 years beginning in 2009. Karen presently serves on their Outreach, Development, and the Herring Run and Paddle Committees. Karen's other interests include singing with the Mystic Chorale and Temple Shir Tikvah, reading, the arts, canoeing, exercising daily, and traveling the world.
Daniel Jalkut is a California native who has lived in the Boston area since 2005, and since 2011 in East Arlington with his wife and two young boys. He is a self-employed software developer who focuses on consumer-focused applications for Apple platforms including the Mac and iOS. He serves as an Arlington Town Meeting Member. In addition to his interest in technology and civic duties, he enjoys practicing guitar, piano, and singing. He is an avid runner who enjoys Arlington's many open spaces, particularly the bike path and Spy Pond Park. Daniel assumed the position of Membership Secretary doing database entry in June of 2017.
Adrienne Landry grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and graduated high school there. In 1971, she left her hometown and moved to Montreal for the adventure of living in another country and expanding her horizons. She learned of programs for older students to enter college and began her educational journey which culminated in a B.F.A. in 1978. She is now a practicing artist and worked for 24 years as an art teacher in Belmont. Adrienne has lived in Arlington since 1990. Her interest in invasive plants began on Monhegan Island, Maine, when, during a five-week painting trip, she decided to give back to the community and get involved with the Monhegan Associates, the local environmental group. Her task was to cut down barberry which grows heartily there. When she returned home, she began noticing and learning about the many invasive plants on the local bike path and began to cut them down. Learning that white vinegar was a natural herbicide, she devised a method for eradicating the plants while not letting the vinegar harm anything else. As part of the Beautification Team for FSPP, she is removing invasive plants. In 2021, along with others, she started planting native plants in their place.
Betsy Leondar-Wright, a longtime activist for social justice, is an Associate Professor of sociology at Lasell College. She is the author of Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures (Cornell University Press 2014) and Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists (2005). From 2010 to 2015 she served as the Program Director of Class Action (www.classism.org) where she is still on the board, and has taught sociology courses at Tufts, Harvard and Boston College. She first participated in environmental advocacy during the nuclear power movement in the 1970s. Betsy worked as a community organizer in low-income communities for a decade, including running youth programs at an urban community garden. Betsy has been active in the FSPP since 1997, is a past President and now focuses on children¹s activities and public education through performance and art serving as FSPP Chair for Park Events.
Julie McBride is currently a web developer at Harvard University where she works on a team developing the university's new web platforms and design system. She previously worked for a research and consulting firm for 14 years on website and software development for a range of clients, including many projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Julie has maintained the FSPP website since 2019 and redeveloped it in 2021. She visits Spy Pond often and enjoys birdwatching.
Marshall McCloskey grew up in Philadelphia, PA, and earned a Masters-degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1961- 62. He met and married a local girl from Medford, MA, and bought a house in Arlington in 1968 where they raised 4 sons and lived for 30 years, except for six years spent in Huntington Beach, CA. He never designed a circuit and retired from work as a software engineer in 2008. During his career, Marshall worked on navigation systems for oil exploration, which involved extensive travel, patient monitoring devices for hospitals, adaptive optics systems, and did software consulting as an independent contractor. He now lives in Belmont with his wife, Sally Hempstead. His children and grandchildren are still mostly in the Boston area, and he gets to see them often. Marshall serves the FSPP presently as Bulk Mailing advisor, previously as: Bulk Mailing Coordinator, Treasurer, Recording Secretary and Beautification Committee assistant.
Fred Moses has been Boston area photographer with over 25 years of experience. He has made both images and computer aided design tools for jewelers. Travel and travel photography are Fred's special loves; environmental portraits of people working, marketplaces, and extremes are favorites. He has taken photos for Spy Pond Park's newsletter and website gallery since 2005. Fred's work is held in private collections internationally and has appeared in juried exhibits at the ACA and the Fuller Craft Museum. Also, he builds commercial websites and was the FSPP Webmaster 2005-2019. He has made marbled paper and silk scarves. During his five-decade technical career, Fred has held management and individual contributor positions in software engineering. Fred has a B.S. & M.S. in Engineering Science.
Susan Saw was born in Myanmar and moved to the US in 2000. She earned a dual Masters' degree for accounting and business administration from Northeastern University in 2008. Susan works in the finance department at an investment and asset management firm in Boston, enjoys traveling, eating new foods, and trying new experiences. Her favorite season is fall in New England. She joined the FSPP in June 2022 and continues supporting the FSPP as its Treasurer since September 2022.
Lally Stowell has worked with inner city youth in NYC and Cambridge and with preschool children in Head Start programs. She taught child development and parenting for many years at Watertown High School and then switched to teaching ESL in Cambridge, first at Centro Presente and then at the Cambridge Community Learning Center where she has been teaching an ESL Family Literacy class since 1993. Lally has also tutored day care providers through ABCD in Boston, mentored/tutored high school students through the Posse Foundation and volunteered at the Food Project. She has been active in helping to eliminate invasive species in the planting beds in Spy Pond Park, coordinating the Stewardship Team/Beautification Committee and was Publicity Co-Chair for the FSPP January 2010-2014. Lally maintains our Memory Books, the record of our community outreach efforts since the beginning of the FSPP.