Board of Directors

Nonprofit

Founded in 2016, The New Territory Magazine has been a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization since 2023. Our Tax ID number is 92-1020750.

Mission

To advocate and foster love and protection of the Great Plains, Ozarks, and Lower Midwest through publishing art and narrative journalism focused on personal, natural and societal stories.

Vision

A Lower Midwest where diverse communities and ecologies are valued and protected, where journalism covers and is consumed by rural communities, small businesses exist in an atmosphere that favors success, youth and students are aware of the current challenges of their neighbors and environments, and arts and culture are well-documented and platformed in our region through ongoing documentation and community building that enhances regional pride. Read more about the issues we are addressing →

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Directors

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Emily Render

President

Emily has been a professional writer since 2002. As owner of Render Writing Services, she has had the opportunity to work with many different non-profits and businesses, and has enjoyed interviewing, writing in the voice of, and working with people in all kinds of professions all over the world. She is enthusiastic about living in rural Missouri and contributing to The New Territory becoming a non-profit, and the issues we are addressing.

Kevin Mahler

Vice President

Kevin Mahler is the owner and president of Contributed Line, a fundraising consultancy that helps nonprofit organizations create infrastructure for philanthropy and exceed fundraising goals through strategy development and deployment.

Kevin earned a Master’s Degree from Michigan State University and a Bachelor’s Degree from The University of Iowa. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska and served on the Board of Directors of the Grant Professionals Association Nebraska Chapter and The New Territory Magazine. Kevin enjoys working in fundraising and philanthropy because it engages multiple disciplines, diverse ways of thinking, collaboration, problem solving, and taking steps to address the urgent issues facing the world.

Kevin’s recent favorite quote: “Most people overestimate what is outside of them and underestimate what is inside of them.”

Suzanne Langlois

Secretary

Suzanne Langlois is an entrepreneur, educator and writer. She co-founded Kaldi’s Coffee, inspired alongside her partner to create a space for community and conversation. Suzanne’s career began in journalism as a staff reporter for The Riverfront Times in St. Louis. As a lecturer at Washington University, she taught entrepreneurship and sustainability to students across disciplines. Suzanne served as the Interim CEO of Meds & Food for Kids, a social enterprise based in Haiti that combats malnutrition by making therapeutic foods, hiring and training local employees, and sourcing crops in country. Native to the lower midwest, Suzanne loves the region and its underappreciated wonders.

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Jeff Schaeperkoetter

Treasurer

Jeff was raised in the small town of Mt. Sterling, in Gasconade County, Missouri, and graduated from Owensville High School and Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University) in 1971. He served in the United States Army from 1971-1974, then in the Missouri Army National Guard, attaining the rank of Major.

After his active duty service, Jeff graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia Law School, served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri, then entered the private practice of law in his home county. He was elected to and served 8 years in the Missouri House of Representatives, four years in the Missouri Senate, and twelve years as a Missouri Circuit Judge.

After his elected public service, Jeff again served as a Missouri Assistant Attorney General, the state’s Director of Facilities Management, Design and Construction, and as a State Tax Commissioner.

In addition to his board service with The New Territory Magazine, Jeff has also been on the Board of Trustees or Directors with four other non-profits, St. Louis Christian College, Historic City of Jefferson Foundation, Saving Sight, and Central Christian College of the Bible.

Jeff and his wife, Jane, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2023. They live in Jefferson City, Missouri, and have four grown children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Margo Farnsworth (she/her)

Margo works as a writer, biomimicry educator and consultant in strategic development for organizations. She has served as faculty, visiting faculty and advises students internationally as a Fellow for the Biomimicry Institute as well as serving as a judge for their Global Design Challenge. Margo has worked as a naturalist, nonprofit Executive Director and Senior Fellow for a Southeastern watershed organization where she advised Federal departments under two administrations. In addition to duties as President with The New Territory, she serves on the board of Deep Roots KC and as advisor to Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Grow Native program. Her writing can be seen in the anthology Wildness: Relations of People and Place in addition to Earthlines, Zygote Quarterly, The New Territory and elsewhere. Her newest book, Biomimicry & Business: How Companies are Using Nature’s Strategies to Succeed (Routledge/CRC Press) tells the stories of business leaders using biomimicry and its effects on their companies. She is currently working on a children’s series based on young adventurers solving troubling challenges by befriending and learning from other organisms – then applying their genius to solve the problem.

Marcia Chatelain (she/her)

Programming Chair

Marcia Chatelain is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Penn, she was a professor of history at Georgetown University, and she taught for four years at the University of Oklahoma-Norman. A historian and educator, Dr. Chatelain is the author of two books, South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration and Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, which was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History. Dr. Chatelain is a 2000 Harry S Truman Scholar, a former NEH Faculty Fellowship recipient, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America.

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Steve Gerkin

Steve Gerkin joins The New Territory Magazine board of directors after years of admiration for this literary magazine’s scope and staff. Gerkin practiced dentistry for 36 years, retiring in 2010. He has three published books, over 50 published essays, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, Jan. 2022). Gerkin writes several fiction genres, creative nonfiction, and is working on his fourth book. He and his wife, Sue, live in an older neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Pete Dulin

Pete Dulin’s plot continues to unfold powered by more than 25 years of experience as a grant-winning writer and professional reporter for numerous local, literary, and national media outlets. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, he is currently writing Barons, Brewers, and Bootleggers: A Social History of Beer in Missouri, and is the author of Expedition of Thirst, Kansas City Beer, KC Ale Trail, and Last Bite. His community-based work includes serving as a board member of The New Territory and Slow Food-Kansas City. petedulin.com

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Leslie VonHolten

Leslie VonHolten is a writer and has worked in fundraising, community-based program design, and communications for The Nature Conservancy, Humanities Kansas, Symphony in the Flint Hills, and the Lawrence Arts Center. She is co-editor of Kansas Matters: 21st-century Writers on the Sunflower State with Thomas Fox Averill, published by the University Press of Kansas. Leslie is enthusiastic about elevating the undertold stories of the Midwest and exploring its rich and varied landscapes.

Cheyenne White

Cheyenne is a writer, a reader, and a Kansan. She earned a B.A. in English Literature from Kansas State University and a M.A. in Popular Culture from Bowling Green State University. Her writing stems from a curiosity about the mundane wonders of everyday life as seen through lenses of public history, material culture, and semiotics. Cheyenne has published in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains and K-State’s Touchstone literary magazine. Place is often a central aspect of her writings due to its power in shaping people, lives, and their stories. As such, and as a lifelong Midwesterner, Cheyenne discovered The New Territory magazine and immediately recognized the significance of the work being done to share the art of this region with the nuance and gravity it deserves.

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Sara Usha Maillacheruvu

Sara has worked as a data scientist, urban planner, and on federal food insecurity issues. She enjoys writing, running, and blueberry pie. With a five-year stint as The New Territory’s executive editor, she is excited to be back to help support the magazine’s organizational goals.

Tina Casagrand Foss (she/her)

Executive Director

Tina Casagrand Foss founded The New Territory magazine in 2016. The concepts of place and belonging are central to her work, which seeks to build readers’ connections to a larger landscape, history and community. She is honored that the magazine has collaborated with nearly 400 writers, artists and editors to unearth new stories focused on the environment, humanities, history and future of the Ozarks and Great Plains. As a nonprofit organization, The New Territory Magazine will continue to pursue this meaningful work. Prior to becoming executive director, Tina worked in communications for numerous state, regional and national nonprofit organizations, as well as a freelance environmental journalist. She is a faculty member of the Missouri Scholars Academy. An eighth-generation rural Missourian and University of Missouri graduate with degrees in anthropology and magazine journalism, she currently lives in Jefferson City, MO, with her spouse, two stepdaughters and giant dog.