Meet the Speakers

Caryl Terrell, the moderator of this webinar, is a longtime active member of the League of Women Voters including past service on the LWV Dane County Board, the State League Board and two national LWV policy task forces. Caryl currently serves on the State League Legislative Committee. Caryl worked as a planner for nine years in Wisconsin state government and 33 years as executive director for the Wisconsin Sierra Club. She also has served as a commissioner of the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC) since spring 2010. Caryl previously served as a commissioner of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District for 22 years between 1993 and 2015, including a stint as commission president. In retirement she is a full-time volunteer focused on the Climate Crisis.

Shari Eggleson

Shari Eggleson has lived in Wisconsin all her life, and received both her undergrad and law degrees from UW-Madison. After law school, she worked briefly with the Sierra Club before taking a position with the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Environmental Protection Unit, where she worked enforcing the state’s laws governing air pollution, water pollution, solid and hazardous waste management, shoreland and wetland protection. Shari and her husband, Mark, a retired DNR park ranger, live in a solar-powered home on the shore of Lake Superior in Bayfield County. 

Waltraud Brinkmann

Waltraud (Wally) Brinkmann, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, taught and did research on a variety of environmental issues, especially climate and water, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following retirement, she was the president of the Friends of Sylvania (a wilderness area in the UP of Michigan) for over a decade and was a co-leader of a 6-year long weed project funded by the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan. Wally is currently a member of the Legislative Committee of the LWVWI and is also active in the LWV of Dane County.

Ann Batiza

Ann Batiza is the vice president for an organization and co-chair of the natural resources committee for the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County. Just prior to retirement, she developed instructional materials for high school teachers and college professors regarding biological energy transfer - after writing the grants to fund the work. Although this occurred at Milwaukee School of Engineering, her primary mentor was former Dane County League President Brook Soltvedt’s husband, U.W. Emeritus Professor David Nelson. Before that Ann wrote a trade textbook on Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Proteomics: Getting the Big Picture for advanced high school students, and she did postdoctoral work on ion channels after receiving a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from U.W. Madison at “a certain age.” In an earlier life, her work was also centered on education and writing.

Carol Diggelman

Carol Diggelman, PhD, Professor Emerita, Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). Carol has a bachelor's of science in chemistry and a masters of science in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, and a PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the Unviersity of Wisconsin - Madison. She taught at MSOE for 32 years across science and engineering undergraduate departments and in the then Environmental Engineering Master’s Program (MSEV), and she organized environmental symposiums for 10 years for this program. She was a member of th eAmerican Society of Civil Engineers for 20 years and served as co-chair of the ASCE National Solid Waste Engineering Committee. After retiring in 2010, she resumed volunteer activities in the League, which she joined in the early 1970s while a stay-at-home mother to two small children. She is currently co-chair of the LWV of Milwaukee County Natural Resources Committee.