Kerry Newberry
Upstate Board of Directors, Membership Chair
Spring Plant Sale Vendor Liaison
Kerry serves as the Membership Chair for the Upstate chapter. She is also the current Outside Vendor Liaison for the chapter’s spring plant sales.
Kerry’s Backstory:
Kerry moved to the Greenville area in 2019, bringing with her a history of nature-related volunteering. While living in Georgia, she participated in native plant rescues and coordinated the installation of a native plant garden in the buffer of a landfill. While living in Minnesota, she helped gather seeds used in prairie restoration efforts.
In Texas, during the three years prior to the move to Greenville, Kerry was the Vice President of a Master Naturalist chapter and was actively involved in the Texas Native Plant Society and the Native Prairie Association of Texas. By that point, Kerry had retired from her IT Business Analyst role, so she had time to lead large volunteer efforts. For a state park, she trained volunteer hike leaders, and while leading a restoration project for the park’s native plant garden, she recruited a volunteer team to maintain the garden. For a city park, she developed a community education program to help engender local appreciation of the park’s prairie habitat. She also worked part-time as an educator naturalist in a science center.
When she moved to Greenville in 2019, Kerry came out of retirement to work for Upstate Forever where she helped the Land Conservation team select and implement a data management system. In February of 2022, Kerry ended her full-time employment at Upstate Forever after training her replacement but maintains close ties as a volunteer.
Now that she and her husband have chosen to retire in Greenville County, Kerry plans to apply her analysis, communication, and people-connecting skills to the SCNPS mission for many years to come.