We are an all-volunteer organization dedicated to bring together individuals and organizations that will encourage a clean outdoors. We’re growing because of giving individuals that recognize the positive aspects of our mission. Below you’ll find more about our organization and people.

Consider joining us and sharing your expertise, passion and skills!

Board of Directors

STEVE JEWETT

Founder/President

Steve is a serial entrepreneur who has started four successful companies in business supplies. He invented two products that enjoy widespread use. He also held a leadership position in a large business. Steve grew up in flat Kansas City and moved to Colorado after catching the ski bug. One thing led to another and he started climbing fourteeners.

Steve has climbed all the fourteeners in Colorado and most in California. He has summited on Denali though it took two attempts and also Aconcagua in South America. Steve has also summited peaks all over the Western United States and in Europe, having been over 13,000 feet more than a thousand times. In addition to climbing, Steve has helped many people in the wilderness through mountain rescue. He has led rescue efforts as a mission coordinator in Eagle County, Colorado and served as the equipment officer for many years. He has been helping out in the backcountry for many years and considers the effort to keep the trails clean his “pay it forward.”

BILL WILLOUGHBY

Founder/Treasurer

Bill has over 30 years’ experience in international business development and has senior industry experience in positions that include digital technology, telecommunications, e-cycling, industrial manufacturing, and software publishing. Bill is a third generation native of San Francisco, California. While working in the telecommunications industry, he lived and traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

While working and living in remote parts of Alaska, he has hiked on trails and has crossed country that few others have traveled. He has also hiked the fabled “Silk Road” in Southern Thailand to the border of Myanmar. His love for hiking and going places started at a young age while he was living in Missoula and Helena, Montana where he would take long treks into the backcountry. Being taught at this age to conserve the wilderness for others to enjoy has led to his concern for keeping all trails free of litter.

ANNETTE POLIWKA

Director

Annette is passionate about nature, which is why she’s dedicated her life to environmental protection and spends most of her free time in nature. She has over ten years of professional experience in the environmental sector: at the city level in San Francisco, and at the federal level in Washington DC and New York. Some key projects and areas include: Zero Waste public policy, water efficiency, addressing and reducing electronic waste, creating a sustainability plan for the Caribbean and leading EPA’s Trash Free Waters efforts. Her mission has been to make sure all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income have fair treatment and meaningful involvement with development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

She studied Mass Media Communications, Spanish at Fairfield University, International Business Management at Georgetown University, Sustainable Fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, and received her M.S. in Environmental Management.

Though Annette grew up in downtown Chicago, she fell in love with nature as a kid through a Ukrainian Scouting organization, in which she reached the equivalent of Eagle Scout. Nowadays, she makes forays into the wild every chance she gets. Most recently, Annette has been kayaking and snorkeling in Belize, and backcountry skiing and winter camping in Wyoming. Annette has also climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Shasta as a fundraiser to get inner city youth outdoors.

ROGER POOR

Director

Roger is an outdoor industry veteran well known by key outdoor leaders both nationally and internationally.  Widely respected for his creative thinking, integrity, and commitment to win/win partnerships.  He is passionate about promoting and defending the outdoors be defining and enrolling community vision.

Roger found his passion for the outdoors while still in elementary school and has been fortunate to find a career that supported it worldwide at both corporate and nonprofit venues dedicated to delivering a positive and life changing natural experience to others. He actively participates in hiking, snowshoeing, whitewater paddling, sea kayaking, fly fishing, is a Wilderness First Responder, coaches youth, and accumulates garages full of outdoor equipment and clothing.  Roger’s expertise will be invaluable in working to establish new industry partnerships to strengthen Clean Trails’ relations with environmental organizations.

Roger currently takes on outsourced branding projects, story telling, teaching, writing,  and in-depth nap research.  

JENNIFER TABANICO

Director

Jennifer Tabanico is President and owner of Action Research, a firm that specializes in changing behavior for the public good by applying marketing and social science research to outreach programs that promote clean, healthy, and sustainable communities. Jennifer has a Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology and more than a decade of experience developing community-based social marketing programs for public and private agencies. She is especially passionate about using her keen understanding of human behavior and talents in program development to improve the environment.

Jennifer loves getting out into nature, whether she’s camping, hiking, kayaking, or just sitting on a lone rock in the wilderness. Throughout her childhood, she spent summers camping with her family and friends in northern Arizona, where she first fell in love with natural world.  These camping trips are among her fondest childhood memories.  Jennifer has been living in the San Diego area since 1997, and now with a child of her own, she is even more inspired to get out into nature.  Jennifer and her son enjoy tent camping, hiking, geocaching, and exploring together.  They are considered “regulars” at local beach and river clean ups, where they have been volunteering since her son was just three years old.  Jennifer is excited to be involved with Clean Trails, National CleanUp Day and World CleanUp Day to help motivate people to keep their local trails clean and healthy so those areas can continue to inspire a love of the outdoors for generations to come.

MIKE WALLEY

Director

For more than three decades Mike has been passionate about the outdoors, especially rock, ice, and mountain climbing. He has climbed all 54 of Colorado’s fourteeners, topped out on Mount Rainer, summited the Grand Teton multiple times, and completed other impressive climbs in the Tetons, Wind Rivers, and Yosemite Valley.

Mike’s love of the outdoors started early. He grew up camping, hiking, biking, hunting, and fishing in beautiful Minnesota. In the 1980’s while in college in South Carolina, he joined the USC Mountaineering and Whitewater Club and discovered his passion for climbing.

Various jobs and volunteer opportunities in the outdoor industry, including Marmot, North Face, REI, and Student Conservation Association (SCA), enabled him to work and play in all the best places from Acadia in Maine to Squamish, BC. Mike has an interesting connection to Clean Trails. He summited his first glaciated peak –Mt. Baker in the North Cascades –with Clean Trails co-founder Steve Jewett. Mike remembers Steve giving away the last of their water and some cheese to people on their way down.....

When he’s not adventuring, Mike works as a Regional Sales Representative for an international water meter company in Boulder, Colorado. He’s also a dedicated husband and father to two amazing teenage daughters.

BEN TAYLOR

Digital Strategy

Ben first discovered his love of nature growing up in the Adirondacks where he spent all of his summers swimming in mountain lakes and working at a local Boy Scout Camp. He managed to achieve Eagle rank and complete a few sections of the Appalachian Trail prior to moving to Minnesota to attend college in a “part of the country I would otherwise never get to know.” He still calls Minnesota home base and loves the opportunities it offers to explore the North Shore of Lake Superior.

His absolute two favorite trips include a week-long backpacking trip in North Cascades National Park and a trip to the Arctic Circle last winter. In lieu of such big trips, this year, he has promised to try winter camping in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.