Paul Sturm

Director

Paul founded Ridge to Reefs (non-profit organization) to support local creation and implementation of watershed plans primarily in the Chesapeake Bay and in coral reef watersheds – with the goal to achieve tangible environmental outcomes.

Paul is a former Center for Watershed Protection Director/Biologist and spent 11 years working on watershed plans, implementation projects and code changes in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and around the country. Prior to that, he spent 6 years researching the effectiveness of implementation of agricultural and urban BMP’s and developed methods to track and target pollution source areas in agricultural watersheds. 

Paul participated in the development of the EPA Sponsored Illicit discharge detection manual.  He directly assisted the development of field assessment protocols for the Outfall Reconnaissance Inventory (ORI) and the development of the field form as well as the water chemistry testing protocol that was developed for the manual.

Paul has contributed to more than 20 publications and has presented more than 60 lectures around the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.  These include participation as a trainer at four National Watershed Institutes, invited speaker at four US Coral Reef Task Meetings in Washington, D.C. and San Juan, Puerto Rico, three National River Rallies, three Army Corp of Engineers Water in the Watersheds Courses in Davis, CA and a Coastal Zone Management Course for the Institute of Marine Affairs in Trinidad and Tobago.  Paul has led trainings in stream assessment, stormwater retrofitting, erosion, code change, illicit discharge detection and elimination, and sediment and erosion control.   

Phal Mantha

Director of Agriculture and Sustainability

Phal's life work and professional experience revolve around solving the problems found at the nexus of food, water, energy, and the environment. He specializes in combining sustainable practices with the latest in precision agriculture and appropriate technologies in order to create an abundance of healthy and high quality food. Phal has been closely involved with every aspect of farm management from strategy and business development to production, sales, and project management. He is skilled in assisting farmers in selecting appropriate technology to enhance and boost their operations and their ability to produce healthy food. He is skilled in the propagation, culture, and commercial production of various plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) and organic biofertilizers including biochar products. He has produced Lactobacillus serum (for foliar applications) along with plant protein hydrolysates (for amino nitrogen fertilizer) and fish hydrolysate fertilizers on an industrial scale.

Phal is working with efforts to support and enhance the rebuilding and advancement of sustainable agriculture in Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Palau as well as reducing pollution from traditional and animal agriculture in the islands of American Samoa as well as in the Chesapeake Bay. He is a vital part of Ridge to Reefs' approach to marry best management practices for pollution reduction with natural soil carbon enhancements and direct production and resilience benefits to farmers while improving water quality. He is also committed to the notion of reducing the dependency and vulnerability of islands on external food sources. He has a degree in Agronomy from Michigan State and is working on his Masters in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech.

Kelly Janae Harris

Ecological Engineer and Project Developer

Kelly received her Bachelor’s in Biological and Agricultural Engineering and a minor in Applied Ecology from North Carolina State University in 2017. After graduating, she spent a year and a half working in the utility-scale solar industry, developing and designing 10 to 200 acre solar farms across the country. Kelly was a Roswell Science and Technology Fellow at Ridge to Reefs and then was hired on as an Ecological Engineer. She is assisting with building capacity and ecological solutions for water quality challenges in American Samoa and Hawaii, specifically challenges with piggeries and on-site waste disposal systems (cesspools and septic systems). Kelly is deeply passionate about all disciplines pertaining to sustainability and ecosystem restoration, as well as environmental and social justice. While in college, she was an active participant of the Alternative Service Break program, traveling to Costa Rica and serving as a team leader for the environmental service trip in Trinidad. She ultimately received the program’s Senior Award of Excellence for her leadership contributions. She also implemented independent urban ecology research, assisted in wetland and stream restoration labs, was a recipient of and active leader within the Goodnight Scholarship Program, and graduated Valedictorian of her class. Outside of Ridge to Reefs, Kelly is a creative professional and energy healing practitioner with a passion for educating others about mental and physical health, life transformation, and living in alignment with natural laws.

Ricardo Liquet-Gonzalez

Puerto Rico Project Coordinator

Ricardo (Ricky) has over a decade of experience in sustainable agriculture practices, agroforest planning and community empowerment. He has been lecturing on conservation practices integration into productive food production agroecosystems over the western region of the Archipelago of Puerto Rico. Ricky has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Mycology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez campus, where he continued his studies and completed a Master’s in Crop Protection with a specialty in Nematology with focus on Mycorrhizal interaction. It has been Ricardo’s passion to work with spice plants, specialty rhizomes, bamboo and native plants in general. Therefore, he has been encouraging the proper use of understory spice crops and specialty bamboo species to diversify agroforest design while maintaining and enhancing native species distribution on site. His mission is to educate and promote the proper use of plants for the mutual benefit of ecosystem and farmers.

Keith AhSoon

American Samoa Restoration Coordinator

Keith AhSoon is the American Samoa Restoration Coordinator for Ridge to Reefs. He resides in Faleasao, Manu’a and travels between the two islands conducting research and implementing projects that are beneficial to the community and are environmentally friendly. Keith’s passion towards the environment can be traced back to when he worked for Eco. Green Inc. in Japan, promoting and marketing the importance of recycling. His ongoing projects include creating innovative ideas to utilize waste products for sustainability and cultivating plants to help the environment. Keith is a proud alum of the University of Hawai’i Manoa, where he majored in Sociology. He serves many roles like village police, project manager for a construction company, and a new member of the Ridge to Reefs family since 2020. Keith is known for wearing a lot of hats. In his spare time, you would find him either fishing, kayaking, tilling his plantation, volunteering to help a stranger, family or neighbor, etc. All in all, this guy never rests until the sun goes down and finds pleasure in learning from every experience he encounters. Favorite quote: “He that plants trees loves others beside himself” – Thomas Fuller

Louise Mitchell

Food and Health Sustainability Coordinator

Louise is the sustainable food systems specialist with a new initiative called Climate Health Solutions, whose mission is to reverse climate change using regenerative agriculture and build resilience to climate change in our communities. From 2006 to 2015, she was the sustainable foods program manager at Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E), a program of the University of Maryland School of Nursing and School of Medicine. She was also the Mid-Atlantic regional organizer of the national Healthy Food in Health Care Program of Health Care Without Harm. In this role, she worked with food service and other health professionals on implementing strategies for increasing their purchases of local sustainable foods, launching farmers’ markets, CSAs and gardens, implementing environmentally sustainable operations in the kitchen, and promoting their achievements.   

Louise is also a physical therapist, a publicist for non-profit organizations promoting conferences on nutrition, integrative medicine, and sustainable agriculture, and in 2002 she helped start a farm focused on growing mineral-rich food and distributed the food to high-end restaurants from New York to D.C. Louise is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where she received a Certificate in Physical Therapy, and Notre Dame of Maryland University where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology.

Albert McCullough, PE, PWS 

Ecological Engineer 

Albert is a registered Professional Engineer in Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington D.C. as well as a Professional Wetland Scientist.

Albert has been the Principal Ecological Engineer for Sustainable Science LLC since 2000 and previous to that was the Maryland Vice President and Construction Consulting Director with Environmental Concern from 1996 - 2000. Albert has been an integral part of Ridge to Reefs work in constructed wetlands, denitrifying bioreactors, and other innovative practices, serving as the lead designer and engineer in many Ridge to Reefs projects.  

He provides preliminary to final plans and specifications, helps interpret and collect field data and contributes to design innovations. While at Environmental Concern he managed the wetland consulting and construction departments including proposal generation, field activities, and design execution. He also teaches professional courses on wetland delineation, hydrology, functional assessment, hydric soils, and wetland treatment systems.
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