Board of Directors
Officers
Growing up in Springfield, IL (on the same street as Abraham Lincoln), Sharon’s family understood the inherent value of things. Her greatest personal influence was her Aunt Mary Fran Lavin. Ms. Lavin was a teacher for 40 years and was naturally frugal, saving things to use in her classroom or reuse in her home.
Sharon says her family was not wasteful and they were brought up to repair things and share with neighbors when we could. These are the values she wants to instill in her daughter and our next generations. When she is not volunteering, Sharon can be found knitting, working in her yard or traveling with her husband and daughter.
With over 20 years of experience of working in Austin education and conservation nonprofits, Sharon’s area of expertise is Fundraising. Using her degree in Technical Writing from Illinois State University, Sharon writes grants and creates fundraising campaigns and events for The University of Texas at Austin and for ACR. She chairs the ACR Fundraising Committee and welcomes anyone who would like to join! You can reach her at sharon@austincreativereuse.org.
Sharon Yarbrough
President
Inspired by Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Children, Karen began diverting interesting and useful items from the landfill, thrifting, gardening, and refashioning at an early age. She has translated that interest into a career as a professional engineer with a focus on waste management, spill prevention, risk assessment, and reduction of stormwater pollutant discharges from industrial facilities.
Karen began creative pursuits through scrapbooking her two children’s exploits, and she learned different techniques related to color theory, photography, and layout. Since then, she has truly enjoyed creatively repurposing items into art pieces, yard art, and a funky henhouse. She continues repurposing by developing creative Girl Scout projects for her troops and SWAPs kits for other troop leaders. Karen views her regular stints sorting materials in the Center’s by-the-bucket section as her weekly The Artist’s Way artist’s date field trip. She is heading up a new Safety Committee with focus on increasing safety in the new space that we will be opening in summer 2018 and is looking for help with the committee. You can reach her at karen@austincreativereuse.org.
Karen Miller (she/her)
Vice President
Sarah grew up in “The Hit Recording Capital of the World,” Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where at an early age her grandmother began teaching her to sew on a singer treadle machine. She has continued to develop her love for sewing constantly trying new patterns and ideas (though now usually on more modern machines). Her passion for sewing is what originally brought her into ACR, where she soon began volunteering.
Sarah moved to Austin over 15 years ago. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer at MedToMarket and has a degree in Education from the University of North Alabama and an MBA from Texas A&M-Commerce. This combination has given her a passion for using her educational, operations, and financial knowledge to help nonprofits accomplish their mission effectively and efficiently. For the past 20 years, Sarah has been actively involved in the life and operation of nonprofits both as a volunteer and employee including CSHI, Micah 6 Food Pantry, Together4Children, and of course ACR.
Sarah is excited to serve as treasurer for ACR. You can reach her by email at
Sarah Humphries
Treasurer
Board Members
Andee grew up and attended college in the North Texas area, earning an Interdisciplinary Master’s Degree from UNT, with a focus in Environmental Science, Sociology, and Public Administration. Having always held a passion for recycling and reuse, in 2004, Andee moved to Hawaii to help implement the state’s “Bottle Bill”, establishing a state-wide Beverage Deposit Recycling Program. Since returning home to Texas, she has been managing Sustainability Programs for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Through this role, she has encouraged the expansion of state park recycling and served as the Chairperson for several years on the Central Texas Council of the State of Texas Alliance for Recycling. Andee is looking forward to bringing her experience in the recycling industry to help ACR continue to grow as an important re-use partner in the Austin community. She can be reached at andee@austincreativereuse.org.
Andee Chamberlain
Sustainability
Nancy spent the first part of her life in the DC area, but had finally had enough of the politics, cold, and traffic, so she moved to Austin. For most of the 20 years or so that she has lived here, she has been doing molecular biology research at UT Austin. She recently started working at Austin Community College’s new campus in the old abandoned Highland Mall (her office is in the old shoe dept of JC Penney’s) and is helping to build Austin’s first leaseable wet lab space.
Nancy comes from a family of creatives. All professional scientists, but with hobbies such as cooking, glass fusing and lampwork, costume design, and jewelry making. As an underpaid scientist, she took naturally to finding ways of keeping busy and to making things, without spending money. Once you have that mindset and that skill set, it’s hard to do things any other way. The fact that re-using materials is also good practice for the planet makes her heart kind of soar. On any given day, you could find her amongst the makings of puppets, jewelry, a metalsmithing project or even a delicious dinner. In addition to spending her days buying $50K laboratory instruments to outfit the space, she scours freecycle and craigslist for valuable opportunistic treasures for the lab. Maybe, someday, there will be a bio-hacker space carved out at Highland. Nancy’s email is nancy@austincreativereuse.org.
Nancy Lyon (she/her)
Business Donations
Sondra was born behind the piney veil in a small town outside of Houston. She grew up altering her Barbie Doll clothes and once she learned to operate a sewing machine, moved on to her thrift store wardrobe. In 2003, she launched a line of tops made from vintage scarves, had showroom representation at the Dallas Apparel Market and sold to clothing stores across the South. She scaled back a few years later and has since sold on Etsy and on her own website, and has included dresses (even wedding dresses), pants, kimonos and meditation pillows to her inventory, always made from 100% recycled fabrics, trims and notions. To supplement her labor of love, she obtained a BA in Sociology from Texas State, and works as a photographer, writer and podcaster.
When a friend asked her to consider a board position at Austin Creative Reuse, she jumped at the chance, as she’d already been donating and shopping for years. Her favorite is obviously the textile section, but she also has a hard time passing up any obscure piece to add to her collection of oddities. She looks forward to bringing you lots of great ACR crafty content. She can be reached at