Rebecca Rubin ’83

“My commitment to building resilient communities is really pretty simple,” Rebecca explains. “You have to move beyond those who are already environmentally motivated and aware - dig deeper, go farther to get more of the community at large asking -- what is our stake in all of this? The human dependency on nature is enormous. My own journey has been one of realizing that the natural world is the beginning and the end of everything that matters on this planet. After the natural world, all else follows.”

Since 2015, Rebecca has also served as board chair of the non-profit National Wildlife Refuge Association (NWRA), the only non- profit dedicated exclusively to protecting the nation's single largest conservation mosaic, the 850 million acre National Wildlife Refuge system. Through its strong advocacy and protection programs, NWRA conserves land and water at a very large scale that conservationists call “landscape scale.” The Refuge system spans over 850 million acres and encompasses 565 national wildlife refuges across the U.S., including ten in NY. NWRA also has an urban wildlife refuge program, one that brings nature to kids when kids cannot -- for reasons of funding or otherwise -- go to nature. One is in Yonkers, among 16 such designated urban wildlife refuges in the nation.

Rebecca also plays an active role in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where in 2014 she delivered a Commencement address at the University of Mary Washington entitled "Saving Nature." She serves on the Commonwealth's Air board, by appointment of the Governor, and on the general board of Virginia Forever which advocates for land and water protections in the Commonwealth.
Rebecca launched her career after earning a history from Harvard College and an MA in international security from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to founding Marstel-Day, she was the director of the Army’s Environmental Policy Institute, after leading a variety of environmental studies and analyses at the not-for-profit Institute for Defense Analyses.