The Watershed Institute is growing with the addition of four new staffers in various departments.
Jessica McDermott is our new Camp Director/Educator and will co-lead the Watershed Nature Camp this summer. Jessica comes to us with nearly two decades of experience in youth development and STEAM education, program management, curriculum writing, and activity development for children with differing abilities and varied interests. Jessica worked at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia for more than 15 years, the last six years of which she served as its assistant director of camp programs. Jessica wrote hundreds of individual lesson plans and supervised 30-50 seasonal staff. She has experience with special education and occupational therapy that helped the Institute increase its accessibility to persons with sensory and developmental differences.
Kendra McKoy is our new Delaware River Advocate. Kendra is a seasoned environmental professional with lab, field and education experience. Kendra spent the last four years at the Liberty Science Center, most recently as Senior STEM Educator and project lead for sustainability and climate change initiatives. Before that, she worked as a lab assistant at Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with a degree in environmental studies and completed a thesis on sea level rise and reconstruction for the town of Sea Breeze, NJ using foraminifera microfossils. Kendra is an NNOCCI certified climate interpreter and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Educators.
Seth Siditsky is our new Digital Marketing Manager. Seth is an award-winning media strategist and journalist, with nearly two decades of experience in visual storytelling. Seth was previously the Director of Multimedia for Advance Local, the parent company to The Star-Ledger and Trenton Times, where he helped grow the national audience for Advance’s content by over 5,000%, to more than two billion views, across a range of social platforms. Before joining Advance, Seth was the Managing Editor for Visuals at The Star-Ledger, where he created the video department and led the team to its first 14 NY Emmy awards (of which he personally won five). Seth is also a trained naturalist, and for the past year has been leading Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve marketing and communications efforts, including e-commerce solutions, media relations, social audience growth and video.
Olivia Spildooren is our new River-Friendly Coordinator. Olivia has served as Watershed Coordinator for the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, where she has facilitated meetings of the Alliance’s stormwater steering committee. Olivia is trained in water quality monitoring and in ArcGIS, which she used to create a story map about green stormwater infrastructure that was published on the Watershed Institute’s website. You may remember Olivia as an intern here last summer. Olivia graduated from Dickinson College this year with a degree in environmental studies.
