Staff & Board Members

Mary Culler
Executive Director

Mary has served as the Executive Director of Stream Teams United since 2018. Mary (Litvan) was born and raised in the James River watershed of Springfield, Missouri and attended Southwest Missouri State University, where she received a B.S. in Biology in 2004. During this time, she became captivated by the lakes and streams of the Ozarks, and decided to pursue a graduate degree in water resources. She traveled north to Iowa, where she researched stream fish and macroinvertebrates in prairie streams of southwest Iowa. In 2006, she completed a M.S. in Environmental Science from Iowa State University. Missing the Great Rivers State (Missouri!), she returned and began working for the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Resource Science Division in Columbia, assisting with crayfish research projects across the Ozark region. In 2008, she returned to Springfield and worked as a Fisheries Management Biologist for MDC’s southwest region, where she conducted stream and lake fish surveys, coordinated kids’ fishing and aquatic education events for the southwest region, and provided assistance to landowners. In 2009, she became Mary Culler, when she married an award winning amateur fisherman and fellow fish enthusiast. In 2011, Mary and her husband relocated to the family farm in northeast Missouri. Mary then worked for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources office in Macon for the next 7 years, where she coordinated watershed and community assistance efforts and provided compliance assistance to permitted facilities and the general public. Mary resides in Shelby County with her husband and three children.

Ashley Packwood
VISTA Project Supervisor/Outreach specialist - Ozarks region
Ashley Packwood graduated from Missouri State University in Spring of 2020 with an undergraduate degree in Wildlife Conservation and Management. She served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with James River Basin Partnership and Stream Teams United from May 2020 to May 2021, and then joined Stream Teams United as our Outreach Specialist and VISTA Project Supervisor to help spread watershed education in Missouri and supervise our growing number of AmeriCorps members. Her love for the outdoors really began with her first job as a walking tour guide at a local zipline, where she met her husband. She spent the next years of her life making up for the time she hadn’t spent outside. Hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, and hammocking became her new normal. Knowing she needed to be outside, she chose a degree in Wildlife Management. She is excited to continue her path in the world of watershed care and water quality.

Emily Young
Advocacy Outreach Coordinator
Emily is a Pennsylvania native who attended Juniata College in South Central Pennsylvania and received a degree in Environmental Chemistry in 2022. During her time at Juniata, she completed an immersive learning semester focused on Aquatic Ecology at the Raystown Field Station, where she explored and strengthened her life-long passion for the outdoors and all things streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Using the skills and tools she acquired during this intense, hands-on semester, she completed an undergraduate thesis investigating total phosphorus sequestration in Raystown Lake, a US Army Corps of Engineers reservoir located in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Following graduation, Emily began working as a Watershed Specialist at the Franklin County Conservation District in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where she coordinated watershed restoration projects in the county and organized several conservation education programs and events for children and adults. In this role, Emily also worked closely with local, state, and federal partners and stakeholders to implement Franklin County’s Chesapeake Bay Countywide Action Plan. Emily served in this role for just over two years before moving to Waynesville, Missouri with her husband in June 2024. Two months later, she eagerly joined Stream Teams United as an Advocacy Outreach Coordinator with a focus on a project aimed to reduce plastic pollution in the waterways of the Great Rivers State. When she’s not engaging in watershed conservation work, Emily enjoys spending her time traveling and exploring with her husband and their dog, hiking, reading, and most recently, learning the ins and outs of sourdough baking. She is excited to join the Stream Team family and to be part of positive change in watershed conservation in Missouri.

Jeff Barrow
President

Jeff is a former executive director of Missouri River Relief, which is part of the Missouri River Stream Team Association. He has been involved in clean water issues for years, helping start Show-Me Clean Streams and Missouri River Relief to his work at Greenbelt Land Trust. Through the years, he has served as a coordinator and board member of MRR. He is co-author of “From the Bottom Up – One Man’s Crusade to Clean Up America’s Rivers”, the story of Chad Pregracke’s Living Lands & Waters barge clean-up crew. Jeff has a deep love of the Missouri River, and is a two-time veteran of the Missouri River 340 Paddle Race.

Bill McIlwee
Vice President
Bill is the the president of the League of Watershed Guardians, which is a Missouri Stream Team Association in the south St. Louis area. The League is well known for removing tons of metal, tires, and litter from the watersheds of eastern Missouri. He is a Level 3 Volunteer Water Quality Monitor and presents interactive macroinvertebrate displays throughout the St. Louis area. Bill earned a bachelor degree from New Mexico State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri - St. Louis. He retired from public school teaching and now teaches in a private school. Bill enjoys doing cleanups, large and small, with his wife Janet.

Goeffrey Stillwell
Secretary/Historian

I retired in 2020. Most of my professional career was as an Applied Research Scientist in Polymer Physics and Electrochemistry. But I have always been outdoors and thinking of ways to improve our earth. As a family we travelled to different states on camping vacations. After reading Silent Spring, I knew that more had to be done. Since 2000 I have been retraining in Environmental Science. I have always been interested in streams and their ecosystems. I moved naturally along this educational path. I also recognize the importance of education and especially environmental education to create a culture and context where natural systems and their sustainability would be valued. My background in environmental science includes classes in environmental engineering, chemical fate and transport, biogeochemistry, surface water quality, groundwater, hydrology, and other topics that I have yet to learn. I have been lucky to have done a few events for Stream Teams United and to join their team and hope to contribute to their goals and purpose in both creative and relevant ways.

Susan Wrasmann
Treasurer

Susan Wrasmann’s interest in water issues began along the Mendocino Coast of California where she protested clear cutting in the Noyo River watershed in the early 1970s while trolling for salmon off the coast. In between she caught crawdads in the creeks and picked mussels off the cliffs and abalone from the rocks at low tide. After a reluctant move to Missouri from Washington State in 1980, she found her peace floating the rivers of the Ozarks. With degrees in Education, Media, and Administration from Western Washington University, University of Missouri Columbia, and Missouri State University, she managed the instructional technology program for a local school district and taught MEd students for Drury University, retiring with the expectation that teaching wasn’t what she would do with her time. But after traveling with her husband to every state in the US and all the provinces of Canada and visiting as many National Parks as they could, she has found herself doing what she apparently knew best, educating and providing resources to those who can effect change in their communities. A member of two Stream Teams since 2007, Susan has advocated for watershed protection at the extremely local level of urban yards. Joining MU Extension specialists from around the State, she helped implement Healthy Yards for Clear Streams in Phelps and Pulaski Counties, utilizing funds from a Non-point Source Pollution grant written by Chris Starbuck. The program funding ended, but Susan, along with all the Stream Team friends she can muster, has continued to educate about watershed issues, setting up booths at Earth Day and Junior Ranger Day on macroinvertebrates and stream ecology, working with Venture Scouts to install over 5000 storm drain markers around Rolla, and giving workshops and demonstrations on stormwater and rain gardens to children and adults. She still floats the Ozark streams, with stops along the way to monitor water quality and count the fascinating creatures that call the rivers home.

Mike Claspille
Recruitment Coordinator

Mike is an active Stream Team volunteer, as a member of Greenway Network, where he helps volunteer at numerous Stream Team events in the St. Louis region. Mike has joined Stream Teams United many times on the Paddle MO journey, as a paddler in the "big canoe". Mike serves on the Stream Teams United Finance and Budget Committee and as the Recruitment Coordinator, helping to provide ideas for recruiting more people to be involved with Stream Teams and Stream Teams United.

Board Members

Melody Torrey, Green Hills Riverwatch – Unionville, MO
Mike Claspille, Greenway Network-St. Charles, MO
Larry O’Donnell, Little Blue River Watershed Coalition-Kansas City, MO
Bob Coffing, LaBarque Creek Watershed Association – Catawissa, MO
Vannessa Frazier, Missouri Bootheel Stream Team Association – Howardville, MO
Larry Cain, Northern Ozarks Rivers Partnership-St. Louis, MO
Zoe Geist, River Des Peres Watershed Coalition- St. Louis, MO
Steve Schnarr, Missouri River Stream Team Association – Columbia, MO
Allison Joyce, Deer Creek Watershed Alliance - St. Louis, MO
Emily Tracy-Smith, Advocacy Advisor
Geoff Stillwell, Education Advisor
Brandon Lang, Project Restore, Warren County
Thomas Guernsey, The Clean Water Coalition, Southwest Missouri

Jeff Barrow, Stewardship Advisor, Missouri River Relief- Columbia, MO
Doris Sherrick, South Grand River Watershed Alliance-Peculiar, MO
Todd Wilkinson, Ozark Water Watchers- Springfield, MO
Kent Robinson, Mill Creek Watershed Coalition-St. Louis, MO
Susan Wrasmann, Big Piney River Stream Team Watershed Association-Houston, MO
Rob Viehman, Yadkin Creek Watershed Coalition – Steelville, MO
Bill McIlwee, League of the Watershed Guardians – Arnold, MO
Donna Swall, Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance – Sunrise Beach, MO
Besa Schweitzer, Miramiguoa Stream Team Association
Cori Westcott, Stewards of Grand Glaize-St. Louis, MO
Kim Dickerson, Salt River Watershed Stream Team Association