Who We Are: Regional Staff
Alexander R. Brash, Northeast Regional Director
Before joining NPCA in 2004, Alex served with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. During his time there, he was the Director of the Management Planning Division; Chief of the Urban Park Service (the Agency's Rangers); and finally the Chief of the Natural Resources Group. In his time with NYC Parks, Alex was responsible for supervising the 300 full-time and 250 seasonal officers patrolling the 1,580 parks covering nearly 28,000 acres, large-scale special events and concerts in the City's parks, and overseeing nearly $92 million of environmental restoration projects. He also conceptualized and supervised its first broad scale program to re-introduce extirpated plants and animals to New York City; species including a wide range from Swamp Azaleas to Bald Eagles. Additionally, Alex built a series of partnerships and led a major fund-raising campaign for the Agency's environmental efforts, creating relationships with Disney, Banana Republic, National Geographic, BP, and numerous other corporate and non-profit partners. He has also worked for the World Wildlife Fund, mapped biogeography for the Nature Conservancy, and conducted research for both the National Park Service at Fire Island National Seashore and for the U.S. Forest Service in Rio Piedras, P.R.
A frequent lecturer, Alex has taught at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Yale's Urban Resource Institute, and at Hunter College. He is also a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and has authored numerous articles on conservation and the natural history of New York City. Alex currently serves as Chair of the Habitat Committee in the EPA's Harbor Estuary Program, a Member of the Harbor Roundtable and Nature Network, and a Council member of the Linnaean Society of New York. For these and other efforts he has received the Wildlife Management Trust's prestigious Presidential Award, the Goodwin-Niering Centers Alumni Environmental Achievement Award, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner's Award, the Environmental Quality Award from Region 2 EPA, and the Lilian Stoner Award from the N.Y. Federation of Bird Clubs.
Born and raised in New York City, Alex received his B.A. with honors in Zoology from Connecticut College, earned an M.A. from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and worked on a Ph.D. in quantitative ecology at Rutgers University.
Oliver Spellman, Northeast Program Manager
Oliver Spellman brings NPCA’s Northeast team decades of innovative urban park renewal experience, having worked in, revitalized, and directed parks departments in three major cities around the country. He directed the Urban Park Service for the City of New York Parks & Recreation Department, focusing his attention on the expansion of the Urban Park Rangers, the environmental education arm of that city's park department. Oliver later assumed the position of Borough Parks Commissioner for Queens and expanded his environmental education programmatic focus to include urban forestry, park protection, and community-based partnerships.
His parks career also includes stints as Parks Director in Cleveland and Houston, where he continued building public awareness about urban park issues, environmental conservation, and the value of open, green space in non-traditional community settings. Oliver was responsible for coordinating the completion of a $700 million parks master plan for the City of Houston. His involvement included traveling to London, Paris, and Amsterdam to study their "best practices" used to plan park systems in cities with unbridled growth. The Houston City Council adopted the comprehensive parks master plan for implementation in 2000.
Oliver brings a broad sense of American history and political processes to this team. He holds a Bachelors degree in American Studies from St. Michael's College and a Juris Doctorate from Howard University Law School. Prior to his urban park career, Oliver taught law for several years in the criminal justice department of Alabama State University, Montgomery.
Jeff Gannon, Regional Director of Development
Jeffrey Gannon joined NPCA in April, 2007. Most recently he was the Northeast Director of Advancement for the Sierra Club where he directed the Club's regional major gift efforts for four years. During that time, Jeff raised money for the Club’s political and conservation programs in New Hampshire, Boston, Maine and New York. Jeff worked with individuals and family foundations to secure key inaugural funding for several advocacy programs, most recently the Sierra Club’s Cool Cities global warming campaign.
Prior to joining Sierra Club, Jeff was the Director of Fund Development and External Affairs for the New York City chapter of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)--the country’s largest low-income housing assistance organization. For close to five years, Jeff worked with New York's foundation and corporate giving communities to help launch several, innovative public-private partnerships that created home ownership opportunities for thousands of working-class New Yorkers.
After earning Bachelor degrees in Music and Liberal Arts from the University of Miami, Jeff spent several years in the music publicity and advertising industries in New York before taking time to live in Central and South America for seven months. Since his return to the United States he has been dedicated to social justice and environmental issues.
When not working, Jeff splits his time between Park Slope, Brooklyn and Columbia County in the Hudson Valley.
Darcy Shiber-Knowles, Northeast Program Coordinator
Originally from Oakland, California, Darcy is a recent graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum lauda in Environmental Science. An avid hiker and firm believer in the importance of outdoor education, Darcy led a wilderness expedition for teenagers with Longacre Expeditions in Maine and Nova Scotia prior to joining NPCA. Recently in Sakyikurom, Ghana, she worked with Engineers Without Borders to identify clean water resources and safe sanitation practices for sustainable public health solutions in partnership with tribal leaders and a local NGO. While at Columbia, Darcy helped to organize the Earth Institute's Global Roundtable on Climate Change, and studied the relationship between vehicular traffic, poverty, and local air pollution in New York City for an Air Quality Group’s white paper at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Under the National Science Foundation, Darcy researched the effects of white-tailed deer herbivory on forest regeneration and biodiversity on a nature preserve near Gettysburg, PA, producing recommendations for more ecologically-responsible local forest and deer population management.
