New BHAS Board Members

Nancy Hubly joins the BHAS Board on the Finance Committee. Nancy is recently retired after a 45-year career in financial services; her experiences in investment management and fundraising for other non-profits will benefit BHAS. Her interest in birds began serendipitously with the gift of a bird feeder. She hung it on her front porch to see what would show up, triggering what would become a passion for seeing, hearing, and learning about birds. She became a member of Eastside Audubon in Kirkland to increase her knowledge and access to experts, and served as Treasurer for 3 years prior to moving to Olympia in 2018. Her very favorite bird is the Western Bluebird, and she is excited to participate in activities that benefit this species in our South Sound Prairie habitat!  

Reinhold Groepler was raised on Long Island and his parents got him interested in birding at an early age. While living in New Mexico for 30 years, he was lucky to have a best friend, Jeff, who was a very knowledgeable birdwatcher. Jeff introduced him to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in the 1970s. He went to college at UNM and earned a BA in Philosophy and a Ph.D. (1995) in environmental economics and modeling the NM economy for policy impacts. His career started as an economist for the NM Legislative Finance Committee specializing in revenue forecasting, investment oversight, tax policy and budgeting. After that, Reinhold worked in energy markets for the local utility using AI models to forecast daily gas demand and modeling the related gas/power markets. He moved to the northwest a few weeks before 9/11, working in state agencies in Oregon and WA and teaching college economics and statistics. Reinhold’s professional passion now is the modeling and forecasting of data using AI deep learning methods. He sees the deep learning methodology as the premier quantitative tool to investigate ecosystem changes and to evaluate the impacts of government policy on the economy and environment.