Eric Bonds is a professor of sociology at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He teaches in the areas of environmental sociology and environmental justice.

Since 2008, Clerk of Circuit Court Chaz W. Haywood has prioritized preserving and sharing Rockingham County’s history. Under his leadership, over 10 million documents have been digitized, and he has secured $423,518 in grant funding for record restoration. He has led award-winning projects promoting public access to records and partnered with James Madison University to create Histories Along the Blue Ridge. Appointed by the governor to the State Historical Records Advisory Board, Haywood remains dedicated to ensuring the community’s legacy is honored, protected and accessible for future generations through innovative historical preservation efforts.

Josh Heslinga is a Virginia lawyer who has long been interested in open government. He joined VCOG’s Board in 2021. His Board service and conference participation is as an individual and strictly in his personal capacity. In his professional life, after several years at a large law firm in Richmond, he was hired by the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia in 2011. He moved to the Virginia IT Agency, where he is the Director of Legal & Legislative Services, in 2019. Find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaheslinga/ and heslinga@gmail.com

Marcos Huerta was trained as an astronomer, receiving his PhD in 2007 from Rice University. He worked in science policy for nearly a decade, including at the Department of Energy office of Science. In 2019, he switched careers to data science where he now works in the private sector.

Brad Jenkins is the general manager and adviser to The Breeze, the student-run website and newspaper at James Madison University. He will be joined by Eleanor Shaw, editor; Drake Miller, news editor; and Alexa Bonilla, the news director of Breeze TV.

Ian Kalish is a clinical staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches in the First Amendment Clinic. His practice includes matters of defamation, government employee speech, right to protest and access to public records, and he frequently litigates in state and federal court.

Will Lowrey is the founder and Legal Counsel for Animal Partisan, a legal advocacy organization focused on challenging unlawful conduct at farms, slaughterhouses, and laboratories. Will has engaged in numerous lawsuits, as well as criminal and administrative enforcement actions against the government, industrial agriculture, and research laboratories, including public records cases and others. Will teaches Animal Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and has taught at other law schools around the country.

Elizabeth Marshall is the senior program manager of the Virginia Solar Initiative at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. In this role she provides energy-related research and data, policy assistance, and technical support to state and local governments and regional organizations. Elizabeth administered the 2022 Virginia Solar Survey and led the creation of the Virginia Solar Database. She is a Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute fellow and holds a BUEP from the University of Virginia and a Specialization in Design Thinking and Innovation from the Darden School of Business.

Chaz Nuttycombe was the Director of CNalysis.com, the only website dedicated to state legislative election forecasting. He has successfully forecasted thousands of state legislative elections since 2017 during his senior year in high school. In 2023, he earned national recognition for successfully predicting every seat in the 2023 Virginia state legislative elections. A Richmond, Virginia native, Chaz graduated from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor’s in Political Science in May 2024. He is now the President of State Navigate, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit currently in development dedicated to creating, curating, and displaying various data on state legislatures around the country.

Megan Pullen is the Deputy Clerk of Historic Archives and Law Librarian at the Rockingham County Circuit Court. She oversees the preservation, digitization, and accessibility of local historical court records, ensuring the public can engage with the region’s rich past. Megan holds both a BA and MA in History from James Madison University and leads award-winning projects like “Histories Along the Blue Ridge”, collaborating with local institutions to share regional history. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for Rocktown History and the Augusta County Historical Society, furthering her commitment to preserving and interpreting local heritage.

Like the founder of Citizens for Fauquier County some 45 years before her, a development proposal that threatened to transform the quiet and quaint landscape of her rural community propelled Amy Trotto into “accidental activism.” A personal injury attorney by trade, Amy soon joined the Board of Directors and has contributed significant time over the past fifteen years towards accomplishing the shared mission of preserving the future of Fauquier County. It was Amy’s FOIA requests focused on a data center application that ultimately led to a legal challenge and an appellate ruling clarifying the VFOIA CEO exemption as it applies to town governance.

Lin Weeks is the co-director of the University of Virginia School of Law First Amendment Clinic and a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He advises and represents journalists, documentary filmmakers, and news organizations on matters involving their newsgathering, source protection, and publication liability. His clients have included National Public Radio, Forbes, Business Insider, C-SPAN, ProPublica, and VPM News. Lin is a graduate of NYU School of Law and he holds an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.