Mike Rubin has an active interest in equestrian activities, farming and land preservation. He has worked with public and private land/farm preservation programs and institutions to preserve over 3,000 acres of land in Montgomery County, Maryland. He also works with local historic preservation boards to repair and maintain historic structures on properties he controls both in Montgomery County and in Aiken, South Carolina. He is Founding Chairman of the Montgomery Countryside Alliance.

Rubin is founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Capitol Investment Associates Corporation, a company with assets exceeding $500 million and a portfolio of properties across the United States and in France. For more than a decade preceding his establishment of Capitol Investment Associates, Mr. Rubin engaged in numerous development and construction activities. He was a principal in the acquisition and redevelopment of many high profile Washington, D.C. area residential and commercial projects and directed the renovation and sale of more than 1,000 condominium and rental apartments.

Mr. Rubin holds a degree in Business Administration with concentrations in finance and economics from the University of Maryland.

David Tobin

President

David Tobin is an equestrian trail rider and community organizer who has been riding since he moved to Colorado in 1989. He has over thirty years of experience in public affairs, conservation, non-profit management and fundraising, and public lands policy. His work includes creating or assisting organizations working in the areas of homelessness, legal services, tax and economic policy, American Indian affairs, public lands policy, grantmaking, and media affairs. He has worked on the national level as a director of development, lobbyist, chief executive officer, program director, founding director, and development advisor.

He has a master’s degree in Public Affairs from the Wallace School of Community Service and Public Affairs at the University of Oregon (1978). Tobin has traveled extensively and lived in Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, and Maryland. He lives in Gaithersburg with his wife Maria, two children, a dog, and three horses (two paint QH and one Irish draft TB cross).

Liza Durant

Vice President

Liza Durant’s lifelong love of horses began as a child with lessons and horse shows in an around Potomac Maryland and training in college with the equestrian team at Cornell University. She enjoys playing polo on acreage dedicated to the County’s Agricultural Reserve, trail riding throughout Western Montgomery County and endurance and competitive trail riding (when time permits!) on dedicated trails and open space on the US East Coast. She shares her love of Potomac’s equestrian heritage with her husband Neal and their two children Ava and Alexander.

Dr. Durant, a native of Montgomery County, is an environmental engineer and holds a BS degree in agricultural engineering from Cornell University and MS and PhD degrees in environmental engineering from Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins University respectively. She currently serves on the part-time faculty in the Whiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University where she teaches graduate courses in engineering microbiology and bioremediation. She has twenty years of experience consulting on matters related to the management of environmental liability as well as the fate and transport of environmental contaminants. From 1996 – 1998, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Fellow serving as a science advisor to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Tom Gutierrez

Secretary

Tom Gutierrez is an active equestrian who resides in Poolesville Maryland with his wife, daughter and son. He holds a Juries Doctor degree from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America and both an MBA and BS from the University of Maryland. He has been practicing telecommunications law with LNG&S for twenty-one years and is a founding and senior partner in the law firm of Lukas, Nace, Gutierrez and Sachs, Chartered Prior to that, he was an attorney with the Federal Communications Commission following receipt of his law degree.

Mr. Gutierrez has been active in a number of ways, and for a number of years, in various efforts to maintain open space and in protect the environment. He is Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Montgomery Countryside Alliance.

Pam DuBois

Treasurer

Pam DuBois and her husband, Eric, look after their two horses at their home in Darnestown. She enjoys jumping and cross country, whether it be trail riding, lessons, eventing or fox hunting. Ms. DuBois currently helps manage and maintain trails east of Seneca Creek between the Potomac River and Route 28 for the Potomac Bridle and Hiking Trail Association. She is also Chair of the Zoning and Development Review Committee for the Darnestown Civic Association which includes helping establish equestrian easements during the site plan review process.

Pam. has been employed for seven years by Bolan Smart Associates, a real estate economic analysis and strategic advisory firm based in Washington DC. Prior to Bolan Smart, she spent nine years as a real estate consultant for Ernst &Young LLP. A native of Philadelphia, she came to the region in 1988 to get her MBA at The George Washington University after completing her undergraduate studies at Mt. Holyoke College (where she was an active participant on their equestrian team).

Naomi Manders

Naomi Manders was born and raised on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley of where she acquired her love of horses and open space. As a transplant to the East Coast she rode extensively in many States and received a B.A. from Manhattanville College in 1959. Marriage brought her to Potomac, MD where she currently resides with her husband Buzz and family of six children and nine grandchildren. Naomi owned and operated a riding school at Hunting Hill on Travilah Road for 20 years until joining the Potomac Hunt in 1986.

From 1986 to 1992 as President of Potomac Bridle & Hiking Trails Association and Montgomery County Coordinator of TROT (Trail Riders of Today) Naomi successfully negotiated many public bridle easements putting together the Travilah Loop, a four-mile trail around Potomac composed of thirteen participating subdivisions linking stables and parklands to preserve equestrian presence in suburbia. From 1993 to 2005 she was employed by MNCPPC in the Department of Park Planning and Development as a trail planner and was instrumental in setting up the Natural Surface Trails Program.