Mary Beth brings more than 35 years of environmental and public health expertise to the board, having worked in both fields during that time. Following her retirement in 2017, she now works part-time in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Career Services Coordinator. Former positions were at academic, government, and non-profit organizations, including River Relay Program Manager at the East Coast Greenway Alliance, Senior Project Officer and Deputy Director at Active Living By Design, and as the first Director of Recycling for North Carolina’s statewide recycling program in the North Carolina Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources. She also served as the Associate Director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Urban & Regional Studies where her work focused on growth management issues and led to a Gov. Hunt appointment to the State of North Carolina Infrastructure Council from 2000 – 2003. Following her master’s degree at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, she worked as a Community Outreach Coordinator for the Environmental Resource Program and as an Environmental Management Research Associate at UNC’s Institute for Environmental Studies. Originally from West Virginia, Mary Beth received a Bachelor of Science degree from West Virginia University. Having lived in North Carolina since 1979, and as a Carolina alum, she is now a devoted Tar Heel fan, and lives in Chapel Hill, NC, with her husband, Bill Rote. Mary Beth has been involved with both NCLCV and NCLCVF since 1984.