Marcia Ratliff

Marcia Ratliff serves as Engage Winona’s Executive Director. Marcia is a writer, poet, and creative thinker with experience in communications, community engagement, and youth development. She began her tenure with Engage Winona in 2018 as an active volunteer, then a board member, and she served as interim program coordinator before becoming Executive Director in 2021. Prior to her time at Engage Winona, Marcia held a position as Youth Services Associate at the Winona Public Library. She was a 2021 recipient of a Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council grant for her poetry work, torn paper poems.

Marcia spent two years with the United States Peace Corps in South Africa, where she specialized in fostering community-led changemaking and implemented evidence-based youth programs at a rural school. During her time there, she wrote and led a grant to work alongside the local community in establishing a new school library. Prior to that she was a wellness and environment reporter with the Winona Daily News. Marcia has served on the Winona Fine Arts Commission and the Teen Voices Project, a youth poetry mentorship program. A lifelong Minnesotan, Marcia has been a member of the Winona community since 2010, and she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Winona State University.

Program & Communications Manager

Isabel McNally

Isabel McNally is the Program & Communications Manager at Engage Winona. With a strong foundation in environmental education and experience in rural and agricultural development, Isabel brings a wealth of knowledge to her role. Before joining Engage Winona, she served as the Manager of the Wabasha Farmers Market Food Hub, where she played a vital role in fostering connections between local farmers and the community. She graduated from Winona State University with a B.S. in Recreation and Tourism and has been living, working and playing in the Driftless area for over five years.

Program Coordinator

NDea Young

NDea Young leads the Winona Area Kitchen Table Program with Engage Winona. She loves developing strong connections with people and is skilled at interacting with people from all walks of life. She has experience as a Community Health Worker and worked in human resources and as a team member in retail. Her education includes an Associates degree in HR Management from Saint Paul College and a Certification in Community Health from Normandale College.

NDea is results-oriented and is known for leadership, self-motivation, determination and empathy, and is passionate about helping others. She is committed to ongoing professional development and seeking new challenges where she can continue to make a positive impact on the community. NDea is an alumni from the Jeremiah Program, which works to disrupt the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children. NDea's experience in the program changed her life, and set her on a path to success and giving back to the community. She is currently working on a youth podcast and loves spending time with her kids Skylar and Gabriel.

Policy Assistant

Dan Wilson

Dan Wilson lives just south of Winona where he rotationally grazes dairy heifers on a farm with his spouse and young daughter. Before he started farming, he lived and worked at the Bethany House in Winona helping folks find housing and community in Winona. Dan has volunteered with many nonprofits in Winona and across the country, all of which have focused on empowering marginalized communities. Dan is excited to bring his skills and passion to the work of Engage Winona.

Kathy Sublett

Kathy Sublett is the Executive Director of Let’s Erase The Stigma, a nonprofit organization that provides tailored services and resources to educate, empower and encourage personal growth. She is great at encouraging, educating, and empowering others to believe in their ability to achieve whatever they put their minds to. She assists Lived Experience Leaders program participants with finding resources in the community, developing mission statements, and starting non-profit organizations.

Tonya Van Tol

Tonya Van Tol is a Manager of Justice Support Services at La Crosse County. She has more than 10 years of experience in reform and abolitionist work. She helps Lived Experience Leaders participants build connections with community resources and area nonprofits.

Maurella Cunningham

Maurella Cunningham has a PhD in curriculum and instruction and has taught middle school, high school, and college students. She engages in social justice work to make the world a better place and leads the Winona chapter of Residents Organizing Against Racism.

La Gr

La Gr is a mental health therapist who has been doing meaningful work in the Winona community for the last decade and a half. La is able to help with full bodied listening, developing effective communication skills, organizing for action, focusing on accessibility, and helping with identity development.

Mollee Sheehan Voerding

Mollee Sheehan Voerding is an experienced certified trauma-informed yoga teacher and educator specializing in personal and communal healing, re-connection and transformation through movement, meditation, Ayurveda, yoga, mindfulness and other practices. After earning degrees in psychology and journalism, Mollee landed in marketing and consulting and has 15 years experience with social and digital communications and online community engagement.

Board of Directors

Randy Skarlupka - President

Randy Skarlupka is the VP of Operations at Miller Ingenuity, the leading innovator of safety critical systems for the rail industry. He is a steadfast proponent of corporate citizenship which aligns with Miller Ingenuity’s commitment to our community. Randy enjoys working with the youth in the community through various programs including Synergy Academy (formerly REACH - preparing students for careers upon graduation), Camp Explore (promoting STEM career exploration) and Miller Mentoring (helping students academically, socially and emotionally). He is a member of the Business Advisory Committee for Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and serves as Board Treasurer for the Winona Area Chamber of Commerce. In the past, he served as the Board Chair for the United Way of the Greater Winona Area and was a member of the Resilient Winona County collaborative coalition.

Kevin McGree - Vice President

Kevin is an operations executive at Oracle Cerner, overseeing project management, support services, IT support, and clinical solutions for hospitals within the region. Kevin is passionate about healthcare services and innovation to make patient care easier for facilities and better for patients. He is excited about Engage Winona’s work supporting folks to speak up and have their voices heard in the community. He moved to Winona with his partner and two kids in 2020 and has grown to love the community and intends to make this their forever home.

Alexa Shapiro - Secretary

Alexa Shapiro is a Minnesota transplant from Southern California, and she made her way to Minnesota after serving for a year with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. During her service year, Alexa worked in a variety of organizations across the United States and discovered her passion for working to strengthen communities. This led to her current roles in program planning and community engagement with Riverway Learning Community and Bluff Country Co-op. Alexa is most proud of her work founding the Winona Outdoor Collaborative, where she uses her passion for diversity and inclusion to help shift the culture of outdoor recreation to be more welcoming for all. Alexa has a Masters in Recreation Management from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

Erica Ericksen - Treasurer

Erica is a nurse manager at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse where she oversees nursing practice for hospital specialty departments located in La Crosse, Onalaska and Winona. She is one of the leaders who opened Gundersen’s Winona Campus in 2019. Erica is passionate about health innovation and wellbeing and obtained her Doctorate of Nursing Practice at the University of Minnesota in 2016 specializing in Integrative Health and Healing. She completed her undergraduate nursing degree at Winona State University. She has called Winona home for the past twelve years and intends to call it home forever.

Jackie Henderson

Jackie is the manager of the Winona Community HUB, a collaborative, community-based health program dedicated to connecting folks to vital health resources and services. They hold a bachelor's degree in public health from Winona State University and a master's in health education and promotion from Walden University. Jackie is committed to advancing health equity across various community sectors, with an emphasis on providing support and empowerment to Community Health Workers (CHWs) to act as catalysts for positive change. In their personal time, you'll often find Jackie exploring various trails, enjoying the vibrant atmosphere of the Farmers Market, or paddling through the backwaters of the Mississippi River.

Laurie Krause

Laurie not only had the privilege of growing up in Winona but, after 10 years away, she and her husband were incredibly fortunate to return to Winona, purchase her family home and raise their daughters there. Laurie dedicated her teaching career to innovation in education, always seeking better ways to fuel a child's innate desire to learn. While earning her Masters Degree in Teaching & Learning, in the first learning community model graduate program at St. Mary's University, Laurie developed a sense of empowerment that she wanted each of her students to experience in their own education. Inspired by Dr. Parker Palmer's book The Courage to Teach, Laurie found the strength to stand up for her beliefs about education and start a community of congruence, where people of all ages helped to create a vision for the school of their dreams, leading to the decision to start Riverway Learning Community, a Minnesota public charter school, and bring those dreams to fruition. In her retirement, she continues to seek out opportunities to give back to the community she loves.

Aurea Osgood

Aurea is a professor of sociology at Winona State University. She teaches in the areas of family sociology and researches marginalized populations, including poverty and specifically food insecurity. Aurea is dedicated to engaging students with real-world service and learning opportunities. She is a longtime community change champion and volunteer, with distinguished service on a number of nonprofit boards, including Winona Volunteer Services and the Bluff Country Co-op, and has been awarded WSU’s Civic Engagement Steward Award. Aurea is a regular food shelf volunteer and advises the WSU student club Warriors For The Kids.

Jay Palmer

Jay is the co-leader and co-founder of the Community Changemaker Lab. Jay is a social work professor at Winona State University with a long history of providing direct support, counseling, and deep collaboration with marginalized populations in the region and in several other communities across the United States.

Jack Ramsland

Jack Ramsland is a musician, artist, and community activist. Jack came upriver from Illinois in 2015 to pursue a degree in public health from Winona State University, where they engaged in the community in a variety of ways from community health to food security work. Jack has worked on issues relating to climate change, food security, outdoor recreation, and healthcare access through organizations such as the Land Stewardship Project, Winona Outdoor Collaborative, and the Pepperfield Project. Aside from professional work, they are also an ardent naturalist and can be found many times walking the trails around Winona identifying plants and saving/spreading native seeds. Jack has helped establish 15 acres of native prairie habitat throughout the driftless region.

Other Advisers + Project Leaders

KENDRA WEBER: Kendra is the coordinator of the Neighbors Helping Neighbors mutual aid program. She serves as the Director of Student and Community Engagement at Winona State University and has a long history of student service and engagement, working both for universities and in community.

Founding Director

Brian Voerding | Executive Director (2017-2021)

Brian Voerding is Engage Winona’s founder and first executive director. Previously, he was the editor of the Winona Daily News since 2012, where he ran the day-to-day operations of the seven-day-a-week daily newspaper and served on an eight-member leadership team for the 250-employee regional media group. At the Daily News he led an effort to create a new model for community coverage that was collaborative, inclusive, and dedicated to seeking solutions instead of spotlighting conflict. He has worked for years as a facilitator and convener, and been deeply engaged in several areas of the Winona community for more than 15 years. Brian has degrees in organizational and civic leadership and behavioral psychology, and has worked in many capacities in community and organizational development, journalism and storytelling, and nonprofit leadership. He is a graduate of the Blandin Foundation’s Community Leadership Program and Academy for Community Engagement, where he learned strategies specific to community development work in rural Minnesota communities. He is a lifelong Minnesotan.