Our Board of Directors are ambassadors for Audubon's work in New Mexico, bringing relevant expertise, ideas and issues to support our mission.

Nancy Allen

Nancy Allen is the Environmental Programs Administrator for the city of Phoenix.   She has spent her career in the environmental field.  Nancy hails from Tennessee and spent her youth in the hills and waterways of the Volunteer State.  While in the southeast, Nancy worked in both public, private and the nonprofit sectors as an environmental scientist.  In her current role with the city of Phoenix, Nancy leads a team dedicated to assisting the city maintain environmental excellence.  In 2021, Nancy and her team lead the development of Phoenix’s first council-approved Community Wide Climate Action Plan.  Her department is also instrumental in multiple projects such as habitat restoration along the Rio Salado, coordination with the C40 network of cities and other regional, national, and international agencies and organization.  Nancy lives in Phoenix with her partner Chuck, rescue dog Leela, rescue kitty Maggie, and quite a few too many plants.     

Ondrea S. Barber 

Ondrea was born and raised in Gallup, New Mexico, and relocated to Phoenix, Arizona in 1990.  Ondrea’s mother and father were New Mexico Natives and worked in the uranium mines and also served and worked for the US Military (Army and Air Force). Ondrea enjoys spending time with family and friends, music, gardening, birding, attending sporting events, cultural activities, and traveling. She has three children – two daughters and a son. She is a graduate of Arizona State University and is a Certified Public Manager.

Ondrea has over 25 years of experience working with and for Federal, State and Tribal governments and the private sector to address environmental concerns and develop successful environmental programs. She also has experience in cultural resource protection, housing, economic development, renewable energy development, mineral resource extraction, remediation, and multi-jurisdictional planning and problem solving. Her work in various capacities giving her a unique perspective and wide range of experiences related to the challenges of environmental protection, Tribal Nation building, and natural resource management.

She’s developed and enacted regulatory, educational, and voluntary programs in various environmental media areas including air quality, water quality, wetlands, wildlife protection and management, Brownfields, solid and hazardous wastes, pesticides, recycling, range management, archaeology, cultural resources protection and management, and community gardening and composting. She’s developed multi-year strategic plans for award-winning Tribal environmental departments, and led large and small groups of environmental protection and cultural resource professionals. Furthermore, she has a passion for building successful teams and ensuring continuous professional development opportunities for all team members.

In addition to consulting services and volunteerism, she currently serves as an Audubon Arizona board member, a National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT) representative, and an instructor for Northern Arizona University’s Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. She previously held leadership roles with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Regional Tribal Operations Committee (RTOC), the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP), Tribal Emergency Response Commissions (TERC), and other local, regional and national partnership groups.

Virgina Nelson Douglass 

Virginia is an Executive Vice President with MidFirst Bank responsible for the Bank’s Treasury Management and Commercial Product Management divisions in six markets across five states.  Virginia serves on a number of committees within the organization including the Retirement Committee for the Midland Profit Sharing Retirement Plan.

Virginia joined MidFirst Bank in 2006.  Additional positions during her tenure included overseeing the Arizona Personal Banking division for eight years during the group’s building of more than twenty retail banking centers while also managing the small business lending group, Business Express, turning the division into a profitable group under her leadership.  She began her career in finance working at Wells Fargo and its predecessor, First Interstate Bank of Arizona, as a Commercial Lender and Treasury Management officer.  She was tapped to serve as Treasurer for FINOVA Capital Corporation during its reorganization in 2004 after having spent a number of years in the publicly-traded commercial finance company’s Treasury group leading Treasury Management and investment functions. 

A fifth generation Arizona native, Virginia earned her Master’s in Business Administration from Arizona State University in 1994.  She received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Accounting from the University of Arizona after attending Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona.  She graduated from the Wharton Business School’s Executive Development program in 2014 and is a Certified Treasury Professional (CTP) and a National and Arizona Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) member. 

Virginia is steadfast in her commitment to serve the community through involvement with organizations such as Phoenix Children’s Hospital Leadership Circle, Boy Scouts of America and Brophy Preparatory’s Mother’s Guild.  She served on the Trinity Opportunity Alliance Board recently and as Board Chair for Arizona Women’s Education and Employment (AWEE), a workforce development non-profit organization with whom she was affiliated with for nine years as a Board member and as the Faces of Success Luncheon Co-Chair in 2007 and 2008.  Virginia currently serves as Board Co - Chair of Audubon Southwest’s Board of Directors, an organization she’s been involved with since 2013 and is serving her second year on the Arizona Heart Walk Executive Leadership Team.

Dave Howell

As a Senior Vice President for Wells Fargo Government Relations, Dave coordinates Wells Fargo’s legislative and political agenda in the Desert Mountain region, which includes six states: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. He also oversees involvement in state bankers associations and other state trade groups, and the Wells Fargo Employee Political Action Committee fundraising and disbursement activities in his service area.
Before joining Wells Fargo in 2003, Howell was Vice President of Marketing & Communication for Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. His professional career has also included corporate affairs at other financial services institutions and twenty years in broadcast journalism.

Howell earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Nancy Meister

Nancy Meister is a 3rd generation Arizonan.  Her grandfather was born in Arizona in 1895 before statehood.  Currently she lives in Yuma and is president of Yuma Audubon Society.  She has been active in the chapter for 40 years and is also President of the Arizona Council of Audubon Chapters. Leading weekly bird walks along the Colorado River, Nancy enjoys the variety of birds wintering here but also all the interesting snowbirds from Canada and Pacific Northwest who love the warm weather of Yuma.

Before retiring, Nancy taught nutrition and culinary arts at Arizona Western College.  As a registered dietitian she worked in a variety of settings including the Ann Arbor VA Hospital, Indian Health Hospitals in Sacaton and Sells, Yuma Regional Medical Center, and Yuma County Health Department.  Her undergraduate degree is from Arizona State University and her master’s is from the University of California at Berkeley.  She did a dietetic internship at King County Hospital in Seattle.

Nancy has been married to Cary Walter Meister for 53 years.  They have one son (Will), a wonderful daughter-in-law, and 2 grandchildren.  Will is a CPA who is currently working in San Francisco for SASB developing standards for ESG.  In her spare time, Nancy enjoys birding, reading, cooking and crafts.  She enjoyed traveling (before Covid) and made many trips to Europe, especially Germany. She is an involved member of the Yuma community and is currently serving on the County Redistricting Commission.

Charlene Saltz

Charlene Saltz is the Manager of ESG Reporting & Data Analytics in the Sustainability organization at Arizona Public Service (APS). Her role at APS is to lead the Sustainability team in informing and engaging employees, stakeholders, and customers about the actions APS is taking to accomplish their mission of providing a sustainable energy future for Arizona. In more than 20 years of work in sustainability, she has implemented and marketed energy efficiency programs, developed customer tools for self-service initiatives, and lead enterprise -wide development of ESG business practices and initiatives.

Prior to joining APS, she spent time developing workshops for teachers integrating urban ecology studies into their classrooms, being a classroom and outdoor educator, and finding ways to make the world a little bit better than she found it.

Patrick B. Sigl

Patrick Sigl is an attorney in Phoenix where he practices natural resources, environmental, and water law.  He is a Principal Managing Attorney at the Salt River Project in the Law Services Department where he manages the Water, Land, and Environment Legal team.  His areas of practice include, among others, water law, water resources management, the Arizona general stream adjudications, Indian law, Indian water rights settlements, reclamation law, Colorado River law, environmental law, and land rights law. Patrick has spent his career specializing in environment and natural resources law and policy.  He worked in Washington DC for the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the United States Congress, focusing on natural resources issues such as forest management, oil and gas development and public land management.  Patrick grew up on the Great Plains of South Dakota and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in civil and environmental engineering from South Dakota State University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of South Dakota.  Patrick loves spending time in the outdoors with his family while photographing the natural landscapes of the desert Southwest.