Photos and brief biographies of ICCT’s Board, Steering Committee, and Action Team leads are linked to their name. Click on a name to see this information.
For an overview of ICCT see About Us.
ICCT Board
Towsif Aziz
Susan Brooks
Ann Eller – Treasurer
Thomas Fletcher
Hedy Hollyfield – Secretary
Lynn Lyle – President
Russ Outcalt
Gail Powell – Vice-President
Steering Committee
Susan Brooks
Charles Coble
Karen Delahunty
Ann Eller
Thomas Fletcher
Heddy Hollyfield
Emerald Izuakor
Steve Jurovics
Lynn Lyle
Marcos Negrete
Russ Outcalt
Larry Petrovick
Gail Powell
John Rees
Louie Rivers
Gary Smith
Elise Strevel
Action Teams
Advocacy – Russell Outcalt, C0-Lead; John Rees, Co-lead
Communications – Towsif Aziz, Lead; Ralph Earle, Webmaster; Ouida Watson, Website Administrator; Claire Korzen, Editor
Earth-Friendly Practices – Pat and Paul Kelly, Co-leads
Education – open
Faith – open
Nominating – Charles Coble, Lead
Outreach – Tom Fletcher, Lead
ICCT Board
Towsif Aziz
Susan Brooks
Ann Eller – Treasurer
Thomas Fletcher
Heddy Hollyfield
Lynn Lyle – President
Russ Outcalt – Secretary
Gail Powell – Vice-President
Action Teams
Advocacy – Russell Outcalt, C0-Lead; John Rees, Co-lead
Communications – Towsif Aziz, Lead; Ralph Earle, Webmaster; Ouida Watson, Website Administrator; Claire Korzen, Editor
Earth-Friendly Practices – Pat and Paul Kelly, Co-leads
Education – open
Faith – open
Nominating – Charles Coble, Lead
Outreach – Tom Fletcher, Lead
Towsif Aziz joined ICCT in October 2019 has since been the Communications Team Lead. He was born in Los Angeles, California and has moved across the US until he settled down in NC in 2004. Towsif is currently working on his MBA from East Carolina University and is also working full time at Policygenius, an online insurance marketplace.
Towsif first became interested in climate change during his AP Environmental Science class in high school and has since has long been concerned with climate change. He was introduced to ICCT through another volunteer organization, Zakat Foundation, where he was also a board member at the time. Towsif recently got married in August 2020 and moved to Apex, NC. He enjoys movies and football, as well as doing personal photography. 
Susan Brooks serves as a member of the ICCT Board, Steering Committee, and Advocacy Committee. Susan loves hiking, nature, and especially hiking in nature. Her interest in these pursuits began when she was a young girl growing up in Whiteville, NC, where she spent many hours exploring the woods behind her house. Susan is lay leader at Benson Memorial United Methodist Church in Raleigh, where she collaborates with other like-minded folks on promoting creation care.
A graduate of NC State University and Harvard Law School, Susan’s professional path is in providing representation to those who are entitled to counsel but cannot afford to hire attorneys, first as an assistant public defender in Florida and now as a state agency administrator in the NC Office of Indigent Defense Services. Her interest in justice extends to environmental justice and ensuring that those who already have so many hardships inflicted on them by society do not further suffer from lack of clean air, water, or land or enjoyment of their life and property. 
Charles Coble is chair of the ICCT Nominating Committee and a member of the Steering committee. Charles is a native North Carolinian, having been born in Stanly County and raised in the small town of Oakboro. “Playing in the woods and fields around my rural community, having the good fortune to be active in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and 4-H, which included attending summer camps, molded my love of the natural world. Those formative experiences influenced my decision to major in Science at Mars Hill College (now University) and in Botany and Geology at UNC.
I gravitated to science teaching and earned an M.A.T. and Ed.D. in Science Education at UNC. I was a professor of Science Education at East Carolina University for 24 years and dean of the ECU School of Education for 13 years. I topped off my professional career as Vice President for University-School Programs, UNC General Administration in Chapel Hill, where I live with my wife, Diana.
Karen Delahunty is a member of the Steering Committee. For many decades, she has pursued a single thread of inquiry and action: ‘Why do we continue to destroy the planet—our only home—even though we know we are doing it?‘
This insistent question guided her through her bachelor’s degree in philosophy at St John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, her study of Eastern philosophy in Kyoto Japan, and her masters degree in Transpersonal Ecopsychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She also studied how to create and implement ecovillages at the Findhorn Ecovillage training program in Scotland. She worked ten years as Training Director for the International Retail Company, The Body Shop, where she passionately enacted the company’s mission to use their shops as a platform for social /environmental justice and sustainable business practices.
Karen is a member of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church where she facilitates the Care of Creation Sunday school class and leads the Earth Ministry Team. Karen’s day job is as a bodyworker and somatic coach, with a private practice in Raleigh. She also serves as lead trainer for The Center for Embodied Education in Pittsboro, NC.
Ralph Earle serves as webmaster for the ICCT website, which he designed and created in 2019. A native of Connecticut, Ralph has lived in the Triangle since 1977. “As a child I spent much of my time in the fields and streams and woodlands and climbed every tree I could. I feel a deep connection with the cycles of nature, and a deep sorrow for how so much of our human activity overlooks and neglects nature, to our long-term detriment.”
Ralph is a lifelong poet who is retired from a career as a manager, technical communicator, and website professional at IBM. Since retiring, he has developed a small business designing websites and helping people with computer issues. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an A.B. from Stanford University. 
Ann Eller serves as Treasurer of ICCT and is a member of the Board and the Faith Team. Ann grew up in western North Carolina, and has been in the Raleigh/Cary area since 1986.
Ann learned about the changing of the seasons and eating from the garden, and watched her father grow tobacco and raise cows during her childhood in the mountains. She also experienced the heat of the summers with relatives in the Piedmont, and the beauty of the ocean on yearly family vacations. She loves to plant a garden in the summer, and mourns the neglected and abused spaces that God created and called humans to tend.
Ann is a social worker, retired from the State of North Carolina, and works part time in supporting organizations that serve people with developmental disabilities. She has an undergraduate degree from Lenoir-Rhyne College, and a Masters in Social Work from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Thomas Fletcher joined the ICCT Board in late 2021 and is coordinating the newly formed Outreach Team. He is a member of the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham, where he has been active in the Earth Justice action group and led its justice ministry council.
Tom became interested in nature growing up in the Pacific Northwest as an avid hiker and backpacker. His degrees in Anthropology, specializing in archaeology, gave him a chance to work “in nature” and grounded him in an interdisciplinary approach to human cultural and environmental relationships. While doing environmental and cultural resource compliance work at Zuni Pueblo and in the broader American Southwest, he developed a working knowledge of government policy.
A career change to education accompanied Tom’s move to North Carolina in the late 1990s; after earning a master’s in Teaching from UNC-Chapel Hill, he taught high school social studies, then worked as a learning specialist at the All Kinds of Minds Institute, which transformed how he thinks about learning. Since then, he has served as an academic coach and community educator. Tom’s concerns about climate and ecological breakdown and related issues has led him to participate in several local groups, including 350.org Triangle and Pachamama RTP.
Heddy Hollyfield joined the ICCT Board in late 2021 and serves as the secretary of the board. She also works with the Earth Friendly Practices Team. She is a member of the Kadampa Center of Raleigh, a Tibetan Buddhist teaching center that follows the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Hedy is a lifelong gardener and nature enthusiast. She grew up camping all over the country with her family and, as a young woman, backpacking in the Southeastern United States. She studied botany as an undergraduate and genetics in graduate school. Her early career was spent in crop genetics, but she eventually started work as a statistician. She retired from a major pharmaceutical company. Much of her career was working in studies of oncology drugs.
In retirement, she started working with Pachamama RTP, affiliated with Pachamama.org, a group dedicated to creating a socially just, environmentally sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling world. Initially, the local Pachamama group was dedicated to teaching the Drawdown principles. Joining the ICCT board seemed like a natural step to reaching a like-minded community in our efforts to create a sustainable world. 
Steve Jurovics is a founding member of the ICCT Steering Committee, and serves as lead for the ICCT Advocacy Team. He’s a member of Yavneh: A Jewish Renewal Community.
Steve holds BS and MS degrees from Columbia University and a PhD in Engineering from the University of Southern California. Aspects of climate change mitigation have been the focus of his engineering work for more than two decades.
A desire to demonstrate that the faith community has a solid biblical basis for addressing the climate change crisis motivated him to write Hospitable Planet: Faith, Action, and Climate Change (Morehouse Publishing, an imprint of Church Publishing, 2016). The United Methodist Women selected Hospitable Planet for its 2018 reading program and “Education for Ministry,” a program of the Episcopal Church, selected Hospitable Planet as their common reading text in 2021 for their approximately 6,500 participants.
Pat and Paul Kelly serve as co-leads for the Earth-Friendly Practices Team. Their vision for creation care includes earth friendly practices rooted in faith and personal choices. Working with St. Francis of Assisi’s Justice and Peace Creation Care ministry, and inspired by the spirit of St. Francis, patron saint of the environment, they have supported ecological efforts including a community garden and solar roofing. Pat and Paul are always looking for ways to make their lives earth-friendly, including composting food waste, sustainable gardening, energy efficiency purchases, installing solar panels, and driving an EV.
Though born and raised in Westchester County, NY, Pat and Paul have spent most of their lives in North Carolina, pursuing their careers and raising 3 wonderful children. They first moved to eastern NC with pharmaceutical company, Burroughs Wellcome, where Paul spent most of his career in IT while Pat completed a graduate degree in Counselor Education. Later they settled in Raleigh where both continued their careers, then retired to pursue a passion to impact climate change.
Lynn Lyle, a founding member of ICCT, serves as president. She grew up Methodist and now attends Pullen Memorial Baptist in Raleigh.
She says, “when I was little, living in north Florida, I never wanted to grow up because grownups were always inside. My cousins and I spent every free minute playing in a sprawling park with huge natural areas, live oaks and a creek running down to the river. Now I’m retired and do what I can to protect the outside and all life on Earth.”
Lynn is retired from a career as a counselor for adults and children of all ages, a community college government relations officer, and an NCSU development officer. Ph.D. and M.Ed., University of Florida; A.B., Sweet Briar College, Virginia.
Russ Outcalt serves as Secretary for the ICCT Board of Directors and is the co-lead of the Advocacy team. He joined ICCT in February 2018 at the organizing meeting. He was raised in Ohio, receiving a Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Cincinnati followed by post-doctoral research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He moved to the Triangle in 1981, where he pursued a career in the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields as a research and process chemist with Rhone-Poulenc and a co-founder of Scynexis, Inc.
Russ has long been concerned with climate change, becoming aware of the phenomenon in the 1980’s through the scientific literature. With that background, he approaches the challenge of climate change from a scientific as well as moral perspective. On his retirement in 2016, he became active in local environmental efforts, with ICCT as well as the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh Environmental Justice Committee.
He is married with two daughters and one grandson and is motivated to fight climate change over concern for their future. He also is an avid racquetball player, music lover and amateur guitar player.
Gail Powell serves as ICCT’s Vice President and leads the ICCT Education Action Team. “As a child in Connecticut, I spent endless hours outdoors, exploring wooded areas, farmlands and nearby streams. I have always felt close to God in nature.”
Gail graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in biology/ecology and relocated to NCSU to earn an M.S. and Ph.D. in entomology. After graduating, Gail worked as a scientist in the agricultural chemical industry focusing on discovery and evaluation of new products, including tests designed to ensure environmental safety.
Years later, she became an 8th grade science teacher. As a teacher, she promoted awareness of the delicate balance of nature and human impact on the environment with particular focus on climate change and water pollution. Gail is a member of the Earth Ministry team at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church where she frequently contributes articles on Earth friendly practices to Pullen publications.
John Rees is co-lead of the ICCT Advocacy team and a member of the Steering Committee. He serves as the liaison between ICCT and Partners for Environmental Justice (PEJ) to monitor the Downtown South Project for environmental impact and racial justice, and he has contributed to the ICCT Drawdown presentations. John has a long-standing interest in conservation and the environment which has grown steadily with the urgent need for action on climate change, the greatest challenge facing the human race.
In 2004 John left a 30-year engineering career in industry and power generation to work in renewable energy and energy efficiency programs at NC State University. After retiring from NC State, he became active with ICCT, NC Interfaith Power and Light, NC Conference of the United Methodist Church Creation Care, and Waste Reduction Partners. When time allows, he enjoys woodworking, hiking, and the outdoors. John and his wife Diane have lived in Raleigh since 1974.
Gary Smith is a member of the Steering Committee. Gary received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Lehigh University, and spent his career in pharmaceutical research. A member of Community UCC in Raleigh, Gary co-founded and leads their Justice in a Changing Climate initiative. He has a passion to reduce fossil fuel use which he pursues through chairing NCIPL’s Energy Working Group, helping churches obtain PV solar, and reducing his own energy consumption; his home is heated and cooled by geothermal HVAC and includes a solar array that provides 80% of their electricity. He enjoys nature, science and the out of doors, the latter especially while on a bicycle. Contact Gary: smithgk@mindspring.com
Elise Strevel is a member of the Steering Committee. She is a native of Connecticut, who lived 10 years in Arkansas and has been happily residing in the Triangle since 1990. “Though I have always lived in urban settings, I have always had a passion for the welfare of animals and nurturing nature wherever it can be found – which is everywhere! I try to live by the truths that no matter where we live, we can make choices that are kind and compassionate to all sentient beings and the environment in which they live; that those choices also benefit us; and that as we do unto others, we are doing unto ourselves.”
Elise is retired from a 20 year career in Special Education and another 20 year career in Nursing. Since retiring, she dedicates much time and effort in various volunteer roles in organizations such as Outreach Coordinator for the Kadampa Buddhist Center, Board Member of Triangle Interfaith Alliance, and ICCT. She holds an M.A. in Special Education, University of Connecticut and a BSN from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.