Friends of Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge
Featured Guests & Speakers

Laura Barghusen

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Virtual Annual Meeting 2021:
Saving North America’s Most Endangered Organisms-Freshwater Mussels

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Summer Gathering 2026:
Freshwater Mussels Focus

Laura supports Openlands as Senior Conservation Research Specialist, where she leads research that translates ecology and environmental planning into actionable policy, funding, land acquisition, and restoration decisions. With 25 years of experience in conservation research and planning, Laura brings expertise in ecosystem conservation, bringing together advocacy, engagement, and science to create opportunities to protect and activate open space.

Michael Jeffords

Guest Speaker at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Annual Meeting 2025:
Vanishing Edens: Biodiversity in a Changing World

Dr. Michael R. Jeffords is the retired education/outreach director for the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS). Dr. Jeffords is an entomologist, freelance photographer, writer, and educator focused primarily on the issue of biodiversity.

Michael was the staff photographer for the Illinois Steward magazine and has co-authored Illinois Wilds, a coffee table book about the natural habitats of Illinois.

See the Photojournaling website of Dr. Jeffords and his wife, Sue, at: https://photojournalingm-s.smugmug.com/

Shawn Graff

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Annual Gathering 2023

Shawn Graff leads American Bird Conservancy conservation programs and projects in the Great Lakes region and coordinates fundraising and building high level relationships with public and private partners and conservation stakeholders. He helps oversee the forest management grants in the region with a special emphasis on leading ABC’s effort to restore habitat for the Golden-winged Warbler in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Prior to joining ABC, he served for 14 years as the Executive Director of the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust. At the Land Trust, Shawn directed the preservation programs, and was responsible for all aspects of organizational development including fund development, membership, education and outreach, land stewardship and conservation.

Shawn has extensive experience in consulting local governments, foundations and non-profit organizations on fundraising, site planning, habitat restoration, historic preservation and long-range planning. He holds a Masters of Art in Art History from UW-Milwaukee and focused much of his research on historic preservation, American Indian cultural arts and city planning.

Kentaro Inoue

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Virtual Annual Meeting 2021:
Saving North America’s Most Endangered Organisms-Freshwater Mussels

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Summer Gathering 2026:
Freshwater Mussels Focus

Kentaro is a conservation biologist at Shedd Aquarium studying freshwater mussels—one of the most imperiled animal groups on Earth. His work aims to prevent extinctions by understanding how human activities and environmental change shape biodiversity. Combining field and laboratory approaches, he identifies the drivers of mussel declines and develops effective conservation strategies. His research spans freshwater ecosystems across North and Central America.

Cindi Jablonski

Guest Speaker at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Virtual Annual Meeting 2021:
Saving North America’s Most Endangered Organisms-Freshwater Mussels

Guest Speaker at Friends of Hackmatack NWR Fall Friends Gathering 2025:
Bumblebees at Hackmatack NWR

Cindi is the McHenry County Conservation District’s Wildlife Ecologist. She worked with the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory Update, evaluating natural areas in the 18 northernmost counties in Illinois before coming to work at the District in 2012. Cindi received a BS in Biology from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and MS in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Lauren Larson

Guest Speaker at Friends of Hackmatack NWR Fall Friends Gathering 2025:
Bumblebees at Hackmatack NWR

Lauren is a Biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She works in the Illinois-Iowa Field Office and is part of the national team working on recovering the federally endangered rusty patched bumblebee.

Dr. Abigail Derby Lewis

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Annual Meeting 2024:
The Power of Prairies, Pollinatators and People

Abigail is the Conservation Tools Program Director in the Keller Science Action Center, a division of the Field Museum in Chicago, dedicated to translating museum science into lasting results for conservation and cultural understanding. Her work as a conservation ecologist focuses on landscape conservation planning and climate change adaptation for urban nature. She is a Commissioner for the Illinois Nature Preserve Commission and Co-Chairs the Chicago Wilderness Climate Committee.

“I began my professional career as a biological anthropologist studying primate behavior and comparative ecology. This path allowed me to live and work in some of the most biodiverse and threatened regions in the world, and fostered a profound and personal interest to become involved in applied research initiatives that contribute to sustainable management and environmental policy in a meaningful way.”

Dr. Joy O’Keefe

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Spring Gathering 2023:
Hackmatack NWR is Batty for Bats

Dr. Joy O’Keefe is an assistant professor and wildlife Extension specialist in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Joy studies endangered bats in landscapes where bats intersect with human activity, deriving new information about bat biology and ecology, and identifying strategies to facilitate coexistence of bats and humans.

Chad Pregracke

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Fall Gathering 2022:
Chad is the founder of Living Lands & Waters, and 2013 CNN Hero of the Year

Chad has become the champion for the Mississippi River. Growing up on its banks, he worked as a commercial shell diver, experiencing the river from the bottom up. Sometimes spending 10 hours a day in the depths and current of pitch black waters, he crawled nearly 150 miles of river bottom over 6 years. He saw its beauty and was frustrated by the neglect. At the age of 17, he decided to clean it up. 23 years later, Chad and his Living Lands & Waters crew have organized and led over 1200 community clean-ups on 23 rivers in 21 states, and removed over 11 millions pounds of garbage.

Gary Swick

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Spring Gathering 2025:
President of the Friends of the Fox River

Gary has been a river advocate, whitewater raft guide, and paddler for most of his adult life. As a teacher, he has used the Fox River as a classroom since joining the Friends in ’91. He’s proud to be responsible for over 30,000 students being introduced to their local streams, as FOTFR Watershed Watchdogs.

Doug Taron

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Spring Gathering 2026:
Chief Curator Emeritus, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago, IL

Doug Taron grew up in Massachusetts, where he received his first butterfly net at age 6.  In 1979 he completed a BA in Biology from Colby College in Waterville, Maine.  He migrated to the Chicago area that same year to attend Northwestern University, where in 1984 he received a Ph.D. from the department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology.  During his graduate studies, Doug began helping to restore Bluff Spring Fen in Elgin, an activity he continues as a Volunteer Steward for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.  Later, while spending 13 years working in the biotechnology industry, he directed the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, a volunteer-based organization monitoring the health of butterfly populations on nature preserves throughout Illinois.  In 1997, the Chicago Academy of Sciences hired Doug where he is now Chief Curator Emeritus for the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.  He is active in butterfly conservation research in the Midwest.

Maggie Zoellner

Guest Presenter at the Friends of Hackmatack NWR Spring Gathering 2023:
Hackmatack NWR is Batty for Bats

Maggie has managed natural resources in Illinois and Wisconsin for the past 35 years. Among her accomplishments is serving as the executive director of Kettle Moraine Land Trust, natural resource manager for DuPage and Lake County Forest preserve districts in northern Illinois, and park manager for the Wisconsin DNR.

Maggie currently spends her time mucking around in marshes and wetlands in southern Wisconsin, working for the Wisconsin Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) on their wetland easement programs.

She graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point with a BS in Natural Resource Management with a Soils emphasis.