Board of Directors
Katherine Conkling Thompson, President
Katherine loves being involved with local issues, working with neighbors on shared interests and goals to improve the quality of life for all. In 1996 with 2 small children and 3rd on the way she and her husband, Dewey, moved to Greenpoint. Back then there was no local family soccer program in our neighborhood parks so in 1999 she helped found the AYSO Greenpoint/Williamsburg Youth Soccer League and was the Assistant Commissioner for 12 years. This lead to her involvement with public parks advocacy as there were no safe soccer fields for kids to play on. In 2014 she became the co-leader of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park. When she is not getting dirty in the gardens on “Weeding Wednesday” or raising money for programming you can find her working in her ceramic studio.
Steve Chesler, Vice-President
When Steve moved to Greenpoint in 2001, he immediately noticed posters mobilizing against a power plant proposed by a developer to be built on the East River waterfront bordering Williamsburg and Greenpoint. From that point on he was enlisted to push back on this threat and resist the infamous 2005 rezoning of our neighborhood with focus on the same waterfront. Both endeavors were charged with the aim of preserving the fabric of his neighborhood and access to the waterfront for the people. Saving Bushwick Inlet Park has been a just continuation of this effort. His role has evolved to include helping maintain the gardens and support programming in BIP and other parks. In parallel he works as a web designer. He also serves on Brooklyn Community Board #1 as Environmental Protection Committee Chair and Land Use Committee Co-Chair, as a steering committee member of Friends of WNYC Transmitter Park and a member of the Newtown Creek Advisory Group.
Julie Marlowe, Treasurer
A resident of NYC since 1989, Julie Marlowe moved to Williamsburg in 2011 excited about the promise of a waterfront park. Initially involved with the nascent park through gardening and greening the first plots (now flourishing pollinator gardens), she was also attracted to the arts programming and potential for the new community center and other programming opportunities. Observing the continuous development of the neighborhoods around her sparked an interest in the impacts of zoning and city planning along with ongoing concerns pertaining to coastal and ecological resiliency. An arts and nature enthusiast, she enjoys bicycling, kayaking and yoga and is currently working as an advisor to small businesses and local designers.
Trina McKeever, Secretary
Trina moved to Oak Street in 1989 where I raised three sons playing in the McCarren Park dust bowl, tripping on cracked asphalt in American Playground and running bases in the street, the East River shoreline a block away, completely inaccessible. Around 2005, she joined the board of GWAPP (Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning) where the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park was hatched, a Friends Group for a park that at the time was merely a promise, “Where’s My Park?”, the all too apt rally cry. In addition to FBIP, she now serves on Community Board 1, the chairperson for the Landmarks and the co-chair of the Parks committee. By day, she manages the studio of sculptor Richard Serra and at night, she dreams of world class art in our world class Bushwick Inlet Park.
Emily Bauer
Emily Bauer is a designer, advocate, and teacher. Growing up on a farm, she now connects people with nature through the built environment, community advocacy, and business. She is the founder of Bau Land, a landscape and urban design studio founded in 2019 which has worked locally and internationally to bring cutting-edge landscapes to places that need them. They completed a regenerative farm in Lebanon awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Jungle NYC is an indoor plant company Emily launched in 2020 that has created plant designs and content with big brands and local groups. Before starting her own companies, Bauer was a designer at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) where she led projects like the Lower Manhattan Climate Adaptation Plan. While an Associate at !melk Landscape Architecture, she helped realize the first park on Las Vegas Blvd. Emily teaches at Columbia University and Cornell University on architecture, landscape architecture, and biology. She regularly lectures on her research and projects. She was a Juror for the AN Best of Design Awards and her work has been featured in exhibitions, including ‘Humanhattan 2050’ at the 2018 Venice Biennale, ‘Unzipped Toronto,’ and ‘The Street’ exhibition at the Van Abbe Museum. Emily Bauer’s approach to design comes through a background in the sciences. She received her Master’s of Landscape Architecture from Cornell University and her Bachelors of Science in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Ward Dennis
Ward is a founding member of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park and has been involved in our community’s fight for public access to the waterfront since the early 2000s. He is currently a board member of North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, and is a past board member (and past co-chair) of North Brooklyn Neighbors (formerly NAG). From 2003 until 2012 he served on Community Board #1 and was a member of CB1‘s ad hoc task force for the 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning (which resulted in the creation of BIP!) and, from 2006 to 2011, chair of CB1‘s Land Use Committee. In the latter capacity, he guided the community’s response to the 2008 contextual rezoning of 190 blocks of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, the 2008 Kedem Winery rezoning, and the 2010 Rose Plaza and Domino rezonings, among others. Ward is a resident of Williamsburg and is a principal at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, a preservation consulting firm specializing in the restoration, rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic properties throughout New York City. He is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and previously taught in the historic preservation program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Kim Fraser
Right now, in her current passage, Kim is a granny-nanny for my first grandbaby. She moved to Greenpoint in 1980. Her heart has always been fighting for Greenpoint. Her voice has always been telling its story. er Polish grandmother was born on Dupont Street and worked for a time at the Domino Sugar Factory. But she is a girl from Connecticut who moved to NYC with big city dreams in her head. She chose to stay and raise my family in Greenpoint. She has always had a love-hate relationship with the place and she would say that continues to this day. She started our community activism by fighting the old dioxin-belching incinerator. She fought for the upgrade of the largest sewage treatment plant in the world! She fought the transfer stations that lined all of Kent Avenue. She fought for a waterfront that would have continuous green space from Newtown Creek to the Williamsburg Bridge. She wanted more than a boardwalk. Now, she is fighting for the completion of Bushwick Inlet Park. She hopes we will have a beautiful green space before her grandbaby goes to college! She hopes she will be able to catch a breeze in the completed, world class, Bushwick Inlet Park.
Scott Fraser
Scott is a documentary filmmaker and proud to have profiled environmental groups active in Greenpoint-Williamsburg in the early 90’s in Earthkeeping: A Call to Action, a WGBH documentary inspired by the first global Environmental Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He helped found Greenpoint Against Smell and Pollution in the 80’s, and worked with Concerned Citizens of Greenpoint, El Puente and Hasidic activists in Williamsburg to help defend our neighborhood from toxic waste, transfer stations, oil spills and air pollution. He has a particular interest in indigenous peoples and the Keshaechqueren tribe, who were the first to enjoy Bushwick Inlet Park’s environmental wonders.
Dewey Thompson
Dewey is a longtime resident of Greenpoint and, for almost as long, actively involved in civic organizations and community advocacy. My wife, Katherine, and I were among a group of local parents who founded the Greenpoint Williamsburg Youth Soccer League in 1999. Searching for suitable playing fields made us realize how underserved the community was/is in terms of open space and parks. He was a member of Community Board #1 for five years, serving on the Parks Committee and was a co-chair of the Greenpoint Williamsburg Association for Parks & Planning. Currently, he is a board member of the Open Space Alliance and the North Brooklyn Newtown Creek Alliance. In 2010, he founded the North Brooklyn Boat Club and serves as its President. Professionally, he is a filmmaker, running Pickerel Pie, a creative production company.
Ana Traverso-Krejcarek
Ana is the Program Officer at Con Edison. In her role, she oversees the Climate Change, Environmental Justice and Stewardship portfolio. Shes responsible for managing a growing philanthropy budget to accelerate change to create and sustain equitable, climate-resilient communities throughout New York City and Westchester. Prior to joining Con Edison, Ana was senior manager of the High Line Network, at the High Line. A strategic hub that inspires, connects, and coaches leaders and open space practitioners across North America, Ana cultivated membership, led ground-breaking research initiatives, and provided technical assistance to projects all over the world seeking advice on how to improve private-public partnerships. Ana is a Bolivian-born urban sociologist with a passion for cities and city life. A best-selling author in her home country, her research focuses on urban history and governance models, exploring how civic movements spurred unique cooperative-based solutions for basic services, as well as urban and regional planning initiatives in cities like Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Heavily invested in promoting community development, Ana has extensive experience designing, managing, and implementing community engagement frameworks, public policy initiatives, and programs for public space projects. She’s worked for nonprofit organizations, universities, and multiple government agencies in Latin America and the US. She’s also led campaigns for new public space and infrastructure reuse projects in Brooklyn, where she advocates for park equity policies across New York City.