The following message is from our Executive Director, Ryan Fehrman, shared with members during our Annual Meeting at the Confluence Natural Area on October 25th, 2025. To become a Friend of the Eno and be invited to future member events, visit EnoRiver.org/Donate.
Thank you all for joining us on this lovely afternoon and thank you for all that you do to support the Eno River Association. I’m Ryan Fehrman and I couldn’t be more delighted to be the Association’s new Executive Director. I’ve met many of you but for those that I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet, I’ll share that I have done nonprofit work in Durham and the Triangle for almost twenty-five years, mostly around issues related to housing and homelessness. I’ve worked with Boards. I’ve done a good bit of fundraising. I enjoy budgeting and understanding financial statements. I love working with smart and talented staff members. I’ve led a merger and supported community-level collaborations to create systems change. And I have never, ever…worked for a land trust before. So I have A LOT to learn and I’m enjoying that process.
I have absolutely loved my nine months at ERA and that’s a testament to the many amazing people that are part of this agency. I have felt so valued and welcomed that I have felt truly at home since day one. I know that ERA has had some very real challenges over the last several years and that this dynamic has led to significant turnover on both the Board and the staff. I don’t want to impugn anyone that made the difficult choice to leave, but what I see now after the agency’s recent challenges, is that this current group of Board and staff are tough, they’re committed to this work, and they want to be here. I’m tempted to make a controlled burn analogy here but suffice it to say, we are trying to learn from our mistakes and to grow from them. A point of emphasis in my short time at ERA has been to support the needs of the staff and board, to build relationships, and to chart a path forward. I intend to do that by listening, asking questions, and creating a consensus. When you’re the least knowledgeable person in the room, collective leadership is a sound strategy.
When I have the chance to talk to our supporters and partners, I always try to be deliberate about crafting comments that inform, that entertain, and that are thought-provoking for those that are listening. I also want to be as transparent as possible about issues related to the Association, which is why I’m sharing today my first resounding failure as the Executive Director of the Eno River Association. You see, several months ago the staff of the Association adopted a pet corn snake from ERA supporter and herpetologist extraordinaire Ron Grunwald. If any of you visited the ERA booth at the Festival or follow our social media, you know that after the smallest designated fundraising campaign in the history of the nonprofit sector, the snake was named “Hisstopher.” He was furnished with a terrarium, a heat lamp, and several natural “hidey holes.” He was growing by leaps and bounds thanks to a steady diet of pinky mice provided by our very attentive staff. And then, last Friday the 17th, I removed Hisstopher’s terrarium lid and clips to make sure that he had enough water for the weekend. I apparently botched reattaching the clips and we discovered that Hisstopher was missing on Monday morning this week. I have consulted the ERA staff handbook and apparently this is not a fireable offense (I’m relieved that snakes are not a protected class), but I feel terrible and am struggling to forgive myself. He was so young. He had his whole snake life ahead of him. And I felt the need to confess this real misstep to you, our members, in the hopes that you’ll be as understanding of my mistakes as you will be supportive of my successes. Hopefully Hisstopher is in a better place now—meaning that he’s living free and sunning himself along the river. And this whole episode has made me truly thankful that we adopted a corn snake and not a copperhead.
I’m going to move on from this hopefully entertaining tale of ineptitude and catastrophe and share more that I hope will be educational. Getting fully staffed has been a priority for me with Kim Livingston’s old Director of Conservation & Stewardship position vacant since late January, and our Director of Philanthropy position being filled on an interim basis since late last year by Hsi Chen. I am excited to share if you didn’t already know, that Hsi hit all of her fundraising performance benchmarks in the interim role and was named ERA’s permanent Director of Development & Communications in mid July. Hsi is smart, talented, and passionate about the work that we do at the Association and we are so lucky to have her. Can I please get a round of applause for our new Director of Development & Communications Hsi Chen? Thank you.
Hsi will provide a development update later in the agenda, but I wanted to mention that we are updating our membership criteria with input from our Development Committee. We welcome every gift, but we are moving to a model where not all gifts convey the privileges of membership. Our basic membership will be set at $5 per month or $60 per year, and to make membership accessible to our entire community, we will have a reduced rate membership available for those with tighter budgets set at $2.50 per month or $30 per year. I want the Association to be inclusive, and we believe that setting a range of membership levels will help us appeal to a wider audience of supporters that believe in our cause. I would also suggest that the reduced rate membership could be a thoughtful holiday gift for any children or grandchildren that you would like to see follow in your footsteps. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Learn more about membership options & benefits.
Our most recent hire was in late August when Chris Dreps joined us as our new Director of Conservation & Stewardship. Chris has spent most of his career in the land trust community working to conserve and protect land in the Ellerbe Creek Watershed and most recently leading efforts to promote flood resiliency at the NC Department of Environmental Quality. Chris has hit the ground running and is trying to close roughly half a dozen projects before year-end, many of which he’ll share in his comments later in the agenda. We were looking for an exceptional person to fill this role and I believe that we found one. Please take a moment to give Chris Dreps a warm round of applause to welcome him to the Eno River Association. Chris, we’re glad you’re here.
One of the things that I love about living in this area is that it is truly diverse. That diversity goes beyond race to include gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, economic status, and age. We see it in our parades, our protests, and I was delighted to see it reflected in this year’s Festival. I have seen with my own eyes in my short time at the Association that this field is disproportionately white and in many ways, ERA has reflected this dynamic on its board, its staff, and among its membership. Both the board and the staff recently completed the Groundwater Training hosted by the Racial Equity Institute and one of the phrases that is used throughout the session is, “it’s in the water.” Meaning that we see statistically significant racial disparities across almost every system in this country. Test scores in public education. Incarceration rates. Policing. Homelessness and poverty. And we can either choose to look away and ignore this mountain of data, or we can look ourselves in the mirror, acknowledge the reality, and lean in on the hard work of promoting equity in our agency, in our sector, and throughout our community. I want to state for the record that I’m not satisfied with the status quo. I want ERA and its supporters to be a reflection of our community and to highlight that amazing diversity in its people and its programs. I have heard directly from people of color in our community that they have sometimes been made to feel unwelcome at the Eno and that absolutely breaks my heart. I’m asking each of you here today to be an ambassador for ERA and the Eno, to be a welcoming and gracious host, and to help make the Eno a reflection of the diversity that makes this region so special. Can I count on you to do that? Thank you.
One of our big upcoming projects over the winter and into 2026 will be updating the Association’s strategic plan. We’ve completed three years of the five year plan and it certainly feels like the environment has changed a great deal, both literally and figuratively, since the plan was originally adopted. We have created a working document to track our progress and the good news is that many of our goals and plans have been accomplished. The bad news is that I have about a dozen more items that need to be in the plan but are not. One of those items is reaccreditation which will be a huge lift over much of 2026 since no one on the current staff has participated in the reaccreditation process. We’re always looking for good volunteers so if anyone here has expertise and familiarity with Land Trust Alliance reaccreditation, please grab me after the meeting. I need the rest of you to say a little prayer for us.
The agenda promised a call to action and I want to keep my end of the bargain. I attended an event recently hosted by one of our indigenous partners with a group called 7 Directions of Service. A video was shown featuring a Native American speaker discussing the rights of nature. She opened her comments to the audience by stating, “it is an honor to be alive in this time of crisis.” And it almost took my breath away, because if I’m being honest, I had been feeling like being alive right now felt like a bit of a burden. The speaker’s joy and optimism felt almost contagious, and it reminded me to stop feeling sorry for myself, and to focus on how I can be a catalyst for positive change even when it’s hard. I suspect that many of you share my concerns about the state of the union and if you’re feeling down or are struggling with a response, I’ve come up with some ideas that I’d encourage you to consider.
The first thing that I’d encourage you to do is to go above and beyond to take care of yourselves and those that you love right now. The word that I’m hearing over and over is “unprecedented.” It feels a bit like 2020 in that regard. My personal belief is that in unprecedented times, our status quo will no longer be sufficient. We need to do more to support our mental health, to put our values into action, and to support our community. I want to look back on these years with a sense of pride. I want to feel like I rose to the challenge. That I modeled strength and resilience for my children. And that I lifted people up. There is a real urge to turtle right now. To withdraw and to isolate. I think that we need to recognize those urges, and deliberately choose to do the things that we know will bring us joy. This is a great time to stop doom scrolling, to ration your consumption of national news, and to get outside.
Some of you may be familiar with the comedian Kevin Nealon of Saturday Night Live and Weekend Update fame. Now, I’ve been watching SNL for almost 35 years and Kevin Nealon may be my least favorite Weekend Update anchor of all time, but he is supporting the Appalachian Trail Conservancy around a campaign to reclaim the phrase “take a hike” and I think he’s on to something. The idea is that this shouldn’t be a tell off, but rather a sound strategy for supporting our own mental health. Feeling down? Take a hike! Tough news day? Take a hike! I’m telling you it works! And I’m here to suggest that you bring a friend and take that hike at an ERA preserve, at the State Park, the Riverwalk, or at West Point. It will remind you why you support this great cause.
The second part of my call to action relates to community. We are social creatures and I would encourage you to be deliberate about ways to come together with your friends, neighbors, and family right now. The antidote to the cruelty that we are faced with isn’t more cruelty, it’s kindness. If you can model kindness and create opportunities for social connection, you are strengthening your community in a very real way. And I feel like we’re doing that here today. I hope that this feels good. That you feel energized. And that our program confirms for each of you that the Eno River Association is bringing people together, doing good work, and supporting the values that you hold dear.
I’ll conclude by revisiting this notion of going beyond the status quo to do more. For those of you with the resources to do so, I’d ask that you please consider giving more to support ERA right now. That could be upping your monthly gift, making a personally significant year-end gift, a major gift to support our land acquisition goals, or planned giving through your estate or retirement account. Doing more might be visiting our website, clicking “get involved” and becoming a regular volunteer, stewarding your favorite trail, supporting our guided hikes, or joining an ERA committee. And hopefully doing more might be doing some of those things PLUS doing some of those things for other agencies and causes that align with your values. When our safety net is fraying, we can’t just focus on one thread. Our partners need help too.
I’m trying to visit with as many of our members as possible to introduce myself, answer questions, and to enlist your ongoing support. If we haven’t met, please try and grab me after the conclusion of the meeting to say hello and chat. You, our members, are the foundation of the Eno River Association and I can’t thank you enough for supporting the agency and our cause.
