Advisory Board

Advisory Board

Aaron Contorer

Aaron spent 10 years at Microsoft where he was an executive on Windows, MSN, and Visual Studio, building and running product-development teams of up to 200 professionals. He helped lead the conversion of MSN from proprietary to Internet standards, and from his early work on Windows networking he holds several patents in distributed systems and network security. He also served as Bill Gates’s technical assistant. He holds 9 “Ship-It” awards from Microsoft for successful delivery of products to market.

He has also served as CTO of startup companies in the fields of printing, business decision optimization, and high-end Web server infrastructure. He was also one of the creators of the shareware business model.

Aaron has degrees in computer science and psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was one of the original Internet software developers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and conducted research in usability and information delivery for government and scientific clients.

A Chicago native and long-time Seattle resident, Aaron now lives in San Diego where he is involved in community issues as President of Contorer Foundation, Chairman of Equinox Center, board member of Move San Diego, and board member of San Diego Social Venture Partners. In his spare time he enjoys practicing Spanish, German, French, and Italian, and is studying Mandarin Chinese.

Bruce Hanson

A master of habitat revegetation, Bruce Hanson has been helping Friends groups develop habitat in San Diego for years. As restoration coordinator for Recon, one of San Diego’s premier environmental consulting firms, he has overseen the revitalization of all types of indigenous local habitats. Knowledgeable about native plant communities and local wildlife, he is one of the San Diego Chapter of the California Native Plant Society’s most valuable members. He managed Chollas Creek restorations at 38th and Alpha and in the Euclid/Market area.

Debby Knight

Debby Knight is a founder and Executive Director of Friends of Rose Canyon (www.rosecanyon.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, preservation and restoration of Rose Canyon and the Rose Creek watershed. She moved to San Diego in 1998 from New England, and got to know Rose Canyon Open Space Park as a wonderful place to run and enjoy nature amidst a sea of surrounding concrete. Friends of Rose Canyon was founded in 2002 in response to the proposal to build a major road through the heart of the park. Debby’s work to preserve Rose Canyon led to building ties with environmental activists and organizations city-wide, including those involved with preserving and restoring San Diego’s canyons.

Richard Louv

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” and chair of the Children & Nature Network. 

Kevin Wirsing

Kevin Wirsing has been community volunteer in University City for the last 16 years. His initial
concern over threats to the quality of life in his neighborhood has evolved into a passion for not only
preserving University City’s own Rose Canyon Open Space Park, but a committment to protecting the rest
of the region’s invaluable canyon resources. Kevin serves on the board of the Friends of Rose Canyon as
well as the board of UC Golden, an unincorporated association concerned with transportation issues in
the Golden Triangle area. Kevin received a bachelors degree in English from California State University at
Sacramento and a law degree from Hastings College of Law. He is a member of the California State Bar and
works as a research attorney for the California Court of Appeal.