Board of Directors

Board President: Gisele Duehring
Gisele grew up in Iowa building bridges over a pasture creek using scrap materials, curiously watching water bugs skim the creek surface, munching mulberries, and loving violets and other wildflowers in the pasture. With a BS in Mechanical Engineering from ISU and some grad classes, she worked as a PE and PMP for a Texas power company/engineering firm mostly with coal-fired plants. One of her favorite volunteer opportunities was teaching illiterate adults to read and training tutors. Marquette’s Hunger Garden holds a special place in her heart. Now at Northern Michigan University’s Ripley CHP Plant. Architecture, flowers, children and pets make her heart sing. The BotEco Center, her passion, creatively encompasses those favorites and more!

Vice President: Susan Estler
Susan is the executive director of Travel Marquette in Marquette, Michigan. She is a destination marketing executive with 20+ years of achievement blending business expertise and a creative mindset to pinpoint needs, devise high–impact solutions, and incorporate industry best practices, all to increase the profile of the community. She has been employed in Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) in Scranton, PA; Panama City Beach, FL; and Bradenton, FL. Prior to her DMO career she was a graphic designer and attended Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Susan enjoys riding her horse Baldwin and creating jewelry utilizing various metalsmithing skills and enameling. She resides in Marquette, MI with her husband Alan and her three black cats, Spencer, Katie, and Sawyer.

Secretary: Jim Cantrill
Jim has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, has lived in the Upper Peninsula since 1990, and currently is a professor and the Department Head of Communication and Performance Studies at Northern Michigan University. Over his career, he has authored several books, anthologized chapters, and journal articles related to environmental communication and conservation psychology. Jim has also served as a consultant for a range of organizations including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service. He was the founder of the U.P. Land Conservancy in the 1990s, and is quite active in the Fred Waara Chapter of Trout Unlimited in addition to focusing on the BotEco Center at the Ore Dock. In his spare time, Jim enjoys fly fishing, cooking, and traveling to distant lands such as Patagonia.

Treasurer: Nhan Nguyen
Nhan was born and raised on a Vietnamese farm, where she gained a deep love for flowers, plants, chickens, dogs, and cats. She moved to the U.S. to reunite with her sweetheart in 2014 and since then has never stopped dreaming of a botanical garden in Marquette. Her dream eventually led her to BotEco, where she gets to work with those who share the same vision. She looks forward to one day seeing her children exploring nature on the dock in the long Michigan winter.

Nhan earned a Bachelor’s degree for Science in Mathematics and is expected to graduate in December 2019 with another degree in Accounting. Joining BotEco’s Board is such a wonderful way to bring her number skills to this special not-for-profit but for-purpose organization.

Dan Kill
Dan Kill is a native of Silver Spring, Maryland and a 1983 graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in finance. Dan also earned his Masters of Business Administration, while serving as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Minot, North Dakota. A few of Dan’s important accomplishments include: surfing the black sand beaches in Iceland, piloting an aircraft with his wife over Half-Dome in Yosemite on a cloudy day, and he owns a Dingo (Roxxie) and didn’t allow it to eat any of his babies. Dan now lives in Negaunee, Michigan with his wife Lori and children, Nickolas and Abbi.

Nancy Peterson grew up in a family business; her father was a landscaper and started 4 garden center business in different parts of Michigan. She obtained her horticulture degree from Ferris State University, was licensed by the State of Michigan for approximately 30 years in pesticide use, and has done landscape designing since 1981. Nancy worked in landscape construction, managed the Garden Center in Marquette, Michigan, and currently is Sales Specialist in the Lowes’ Outside Lawn and Garden Department in Marquette.

Stacey DeLoose is an Instructional Technologist at Northern Michigan University’s Center for Teaching and Learning. She first came to Marquette from the Detroit Metro area as a student and fell in love with the area. The railway trestle leading to the Ore Dock was always the symbol that she was returning ‘home.’ Now that the trestle has been repurposed, making better use of the Ore Dock for the community is a very exciting project.
Stacey has two sons. Jack is a middle schooler and Kristopher has recently graduated from NMU, is on his own, and has given her two grandsons.

Richard L. Price, P.E.
Senior Structural Engineer
Richard is a project manager and senior structural engineer at GEI Consultants, Inc. He grew up in Wyoming building towers and bridges with cards, Legos, sticks, basically anything he could cobble together. With over 12 years of professional structural engineering experience, working on projects from coast to coast, that passion has not changed. Richard moved to the Marquette area in 2015 and spends free time with his daughter exploring the UP. Richard brings his construction and design expertise to the board, helping BotEco Center achieve its goal while remaining grounded.

Cori Bodeman
Cori is a professor of Entrepreneurship in the College of Business at Northern Michigan University. She previously served as the Director of Marketing and New Business Development at Goodwill of Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. She holds a BS in Marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MS in Environmental Management from Illinois Institute of Technology and is pursuing a doctorate at Anderson University. She resides in Marquette on a small farm with a menagerie of animals.

Previous Board Members:
Vice President: Joe Rom
Joseph Scanlan
Aurora Dobbs
Michael Marsden
Kristine Goupille

​Board of Directors

Board of Directors