Steve Evans

Retired from a career of developing farmers markets and helping small farmers increase their marketing skills to grow their businesses.

Born in Munich Germany, he grew up on various military bases until his parents settled in the Puget Sound area. Steve has a Bachelors degree in Horticulture and Masters in Adult and Continuing Education.   In late 1979 and 1980, he worked for the Swiss Agricultural Research Service near Geneva, Switzerland where he helped develop IPM (Integrated Pest Management - ways to reduce pesticide use) techniques, in vineyards and tree fruits.  He spent 15 years working at Pike Place Market helping small farmers grow and sell products.  During this time he provided technical assistance to various groups and cities around the state to create markets in their communities.  He worked for King County for 23 years where he continued to help develop farmers markets in cities around the county.  In addition, he helped organize existing markets to share information and work cooperatively on common issues. (4/18/19)

Jim Murray

Jim Murray has been a faculty member in Chemical Oceanography in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington since 1973. He met Pam Gibson soon after arriving and they married on December 21, 1974. This was the shortest day of the year and, as you know, days only get better after that. They had two wonderful children, John (now at UPenn in Philadelphia) (2 kids) and Lisa (in Grenoble, France with Accenture) (3 kids). Jim became Emeritus Professor in September 2013. He was the Founding Director of the UW Program on Climate Change in 2001. His goal is the 50/50/50 club.

His most recent major scientific interests have been the distributions and origin of iron and other trace elements in the equatorial undercurrent of the Pacific, nitrogen cycling in the Black Sea and impacts of ocean acidification in Puget Sound and the Persian Gulf. He also works on energy issues (e.g., peak oil) from a perspective that they represent an uncertainty on climate change.

Born in Memphis, TN in 1946, he passed through Louisville, KY, Whittier, CA and Laguna Beach, CA before getting some education at University of California (1968, B.A. Geology) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program (1973, Ph.D. Chemical Oceanography). He organized the 1988 US-Turkish Black Sea Expedition and the 1992 JGOFS Process Study of carbon cycling in the central equatorial Pacific (EqPac). He led formation of an Ocean Acidification Research Lab at the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories from 2010 to 2013. He was President of the Ocean Science Section of the American Geophysical Union from 2013 to 2015.

Pam and I take great trips together. Last year we did a Silk Road trip from Xian to Istanbul. I also love to hike and bike. Great hikes with the kids include Monte Cristo, Mammoth Mtn to Yosemite, The Maroon Bells loop in Colorado, a loop around the Grand Tetons and Tour du Mont Blanc. The best bike adventures were a credit card ride to San Francisco, rides across Washington and Oregon and a French alps ride from Nice to Geneva.  02/04/2020

Al Palladin

Alexey Palladin is a business and technology developer, leader of diverse teams. He is currently a Director in the Strategy and Business Acceleration team at Cisco Systems. Alexey worked in senior positions incl. CEO (Co-founder, Editor & Publisher of the 1st Home Computing and Gaming magazine in the U.S.S.R; CEO of VirtuSphere (VR platform); Co-founder, CEO of Linigen (alternative energy); Owner of P.ART Gallery), VP (U.S. Food Technologies), GM (Intel, Microsoft), Board member (H2IO, Lagotek). He drove explosive growth at Intel, where at age 24 he became the General Manager of the Moscow office and later won the top corporate award. At Microsoft, he was responsible for all business in 12 countries; lead a team that developed product features, which shipped in billions of copies and helped the company protect hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of sales; introduced the Software Asset Management partner program competency & certification, which currently drives more than $4B annually. Alexey lead sales, marketing, business development, operations and engineering groups; he is proud that his team with the highest productivity was made up of very different people (representatives of many nations; different religious and social outlooks; greatly varying levels of work experience (from 0 to 40+ years). He served in a branch of the Special Forces of the Soviet Army, honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant. Alexey's full business profile can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeypalladin. Alexey was born in Moscow, Russia in 1970, and at present, he has spent equal amounts of time in Eurasia and North America. He also lived in Ottawa, Canada; Washington, D.C.; Khabarovsk, Russia. Since 2000, he has called the Seattle area his home. In 2010, he became a naturalized American citizen. Alexey is blessed with wonderful children - a daughter and a son. Following a lifelong love of basketball, he continues to play at the Bellevue ProClub; enjoys shooting at the Issaquah Sportsmen’s Club; studies history, especially Russian-American relations; and strives to do more off-road exploration. 10/30/18

Bill Riddle

Born in New Haven in 1946 (while his parents were studying Chinese at the Yale Institute of Far Eastern Languages) he lived in Peking from ‘46-49.   In ’49 through ’64 he lived in northern India where his father taught at Punjab University and his mother was a nutritionist.  Graduating from High School in India  in 1964, he spent the summer traveling the Youth Hostel circuit in Europe.  He attended Swarthmore College and then graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, CA, majoring in Anthropology, and minoring in Math.  Out of college, he worked with disabled adults and homeless people in Long Beach, CA.  He found it so interesting that he went on to earn a  Masters degree in Social Work at Arizona State, Tempe, AZ.  While in Arizona, he worked with the Pima Indians on the Gila River Reservation. 

He moved to Bremerton, WA in 1972 and worked with autistic children in Bremerton at the first Center for Autistic Children in the United States.  He worked for the Juvenile Court with juvenile offenders, and for Mental Health agencies.  He earned a Certificate as a Montessori School Teacher with the idea of opening a school (which did not happen).  And finally he worked as a Social Service Administrator with various agencies of  the State of Washington until his retirement in 2008.  His outlook on social issues is that every situation is different, there are no easy solutions, and programs that use "cookie-cutter" solutions are bound to fail.

In retirement, he follows his interests, which include keeping in touch with friends all over the world,  current events (especially India), travel, and reading history and biography.  He enjoys lunch with friends, discussing universal questions, mindfulness, working out, and the natural beauty of Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula, and the Columbia River.  He has an older and a younger sister, both of whom reside of State.  Married in 1979, he and his wife Barbara have one son Charles, now age 36. 6/10/2020

Scott Severs

Born in St. Louis (1974). Grew up in Cincinnati until the age of 11 and then promptly moved to Scottsdale, AZ in 1985 after braving too many Midwest winters. Went to a Jesuit Catholic High School in the Phoenix area (Brophy College Prep), then moved away from home to the University of Notre Dame to study Aerospace engineering and brave some seriously cold winters! In 1996, I got my private pilot’s license and realized a dream of mine, taking dad flying. Upon graduating from ND, I had one job offer on the table so I moved, sight unseen, to Seattle to begin my career at Boeing. Held various jobs in the commercial airplanes autopilot group and the F-22 avionics software development team, but by 2000 I was ready to move on. In 1997, I went to graduate school at Seattle University for an MBA and became very interested in the field of finance and investments and in the summer of 2000 received a job offer to be an equity analyst at Safeco Asset Management. Completed the CFA program as part of the job requirement and 4 years later they put the business up for sale. Went to work at UBS Financial Services as a portfolio manager for a team in the private wealth management department. 6 years later those same business partners and I founded our own wealth management firm, Garde Capital, providing investment advisory services to families, non-profits, and corporate retirement plans. Met my wife Linda in 1997 and we were married in 2000. Linda works at Providence Health & Services currently in a Black Belt role (Operational Excellence).  Have two great kids: Tyler (13) and Natalie (8) and have lived in Bothell for the last 18 years.  10/30/18

Roger Wallace

A Northwest boy, I was born in Oregon and raised in Seattle. I graduated from the University of Washington and years later did consulting work there where I overheard a student telling his friends his favorite class was “Campus Turmoil at the UW during the 1960’s”  Ouch!  So apparently I’m a piece of history now.  Received my Master of Architecture degree (combined with my skiing degree, equal hours to both) from the University of Utah and became a licensed architect in five states.

I moved back to the Seattle area, initially on Bainbridge Island, where I commuted to downtown via ferry. Worked primarily for very largest architectural firms on complex projects including: Airports, Hospitals, High Rise Commercial, Research Labs, and Convention Centers.  I also had my own architectural firm for a dozen years but later returned to large practice until I retired from full time work.  Currently I’m doing a few residential architectural projects each year to keep the brain moving.

I have published a novel, Dancing on Their Tails, and recently Suicide’s Embers, Poems of Grief.  Both books are available at (https://www.amazon.com/Roger-Wayne Wallace/e/B07G7HFYMW/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1) or through my website RogerWayneWallace.com.

I continue to write fiction.  In addition, I remain active in biking, skiing, travel, fly fishing and gardening … all excellent time wasters.

Fletch Waller

After shuttering his International Consultancy in hotel and resort management, Fletch has invested his time and experience in helping not-for-profit orgs improve their effectiveness and productivity.  He has served as Trustee and President of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and of Horizon House, Seattle’s leading Continuing Care Retirement Community; as founding Trustee of the Seattle Chamber Music Society Foundation; and currently as Trustee and President of the Pratt Fine Arts Center.  Fletch grew up in Washington DC, but raised his family in Minneapolis after Hamilton College, Harvard Business School and the US Army were finished with him. Fletch crews 3 days a week with Mt. Baker Rowing Club (where he was on the coaching staff) and is a (very) amateur stone sculptor.  In 1991, Fletch married Ann Janes, a Morgan Stanley Sr. VP, now also retired.

He and Ann, his muse and best pal, enjoy chamber music, jazz and symphony; theatre and opera; skate skiing (free-style XC skiing) and mountain hiking; international travel; and between them, their five children, nine grandchildren and two great-grand daughters. Fletch blogs on matters personal and civic at Northwest Ruminations. 5/26/20