Board of Directors and Staff

 Meg Duhr has been a diehard St. Paulite since moving to the city for college in the late 90’s. She’s lived
in the West 7th neighborhood (off and on) since 2004 and has been a renter, homeowner, and landlady
of a small rental cottage in the neighborhood. She currently lives with her wife and one elderly dog in an old house near West 7th and St. Clair and enjoys tending to multiple garden projects—a pollinator rain garden, multiple raised veggie beds, and native plant boulevard plantings.
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Meg’s professional background is in ecological restoration, invasive species management, and science
communications. She has worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive
Species Research Center, and currently serves as the Invasive Species Supervisor for the Three Rivers
Park District.

Meg is both fiercely proud of the West 7th neighborhood and keenly aware of its challenges and areas for
improvement, which motivated her to join the Federation Board in 2022. Meg takes great pride in the
historic character of our neighborhood, its welcoming, quirky, and diverse community, and its
independent businesses. Major concerns and priorities for Meg are maintaining/restoring neighborhood
affordability for existing and future residents, restoring the urban canopy in the wake of the city’s ash
tree eradication program, historic preservation, and improving the pedestrian and cyclist experience on
West 7th and surrounding streets. 

 Though from Wisconsin, Maggie has lived in Minnesota since attending the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She has lived in the West 7th neighborhood for over five years as a renter and now as a homeowner with her husband and two cats. All have gotten to know their nearby neighbors and appreciate the helpful and friendly people. She loves meeting folks and making connections, reading, and cooking. She also is constantly trying to recruit people to move here and loves to share all the amazing places to visit. 
Due to her family’s constant commitment to their community back home and through time with the Leadership St. Paul program, Maggie was motivated and ready to find a more formal way to engage with the local community. She brings energy and a breadth of professional and educational experiences to her role as an Area 2 Coordinator while focusing on increasing community engagement and helping create the best neighborhood for living and working.   
Maggie believes the people, places, and spaces make West 7th a wonderfully unique place to live and looks forward to contributing to a strong future for all in the area. 

Andrew has lived in Saint Paul his whole life, except for a five-year sojourn in upstate New York for graduate school. He grew up on the East Side and has lived in both the Midway and West Seventh neighborhoods as an adult, currently residing in Area 1 with his wife and two young kids. His family loves living within walking distance from many of our favorite restaurants and shops, the river, and downtown attractions like the science museum and Palace Theater. Andrew is grateful for the opportunity to support and engage with the West Seventh community through his work with the Fort Road Federation.
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Andrew has a PhD in philosophy and spent several years teaching as an adjunct professor. He is passionate about applying his analytical skills in public service. Andrew attempts to keep his interest in philosophy and literature alive, mostly by listening to audiobooks while cleaning up after his kids. He is always up for a lively, meandering discussion about topics including but not limited to film, fiction, cognitive science, moral psychology, hip-hop, and poetry.  

 Sara was a homeowner in downtown St. Paul when she discovered this had been her city all along. Sara has rented the same apartment in Area 3 of Fort Road/West 7th for 10 years. She loves gathering people together for good work even though she recently had one epic failure of a year in the community garden. Her first civic engagement in the neighborhood was through the Smith Bridge Community Health Forum that helped inform the redesign of High Bridge railings. The people of the W 7th are one of her favorite things. So is bar trivia. Sara has been honored to represent the neighborhood on the River Learning Center Community Advisory Committee. She works in nonprofit development and program management. She is a longtime contributor to the Humphrey International Fellows Host Family Program and enjoys showing Fellows from all over the world how special the west end is. 

 Korinne grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and purchased her first home in the West 7th/Little Bohemia neighborhood in December 2021. She resides with her husband and two dogs, Murphy and Millie. Korinne is an established nonprofit professional with over 15 years of experience in fundraising, program management, and events. Most recently, Korinne has joined the University of Minnesota Foundation as a Senior Development Officer- Heart, Medicine, and Surgery. When she is not working, attending board meetings, or walking her dogs, she explores new restaurants, goes to a show at the Xcel Center, or watches football at Tom Reids. 

Korinne looks forward to increasing community engagement and working with the young people in the neighborhood to be involved and take pride in where they live. 

 Kelsey grew up in the West 7th neighborhood in Irvine Park. The Fort Road Federation has been a part of her life since I was a young girl and her father was a board member. Kelsey has worked in the service industry, the arts, counseling and now early childhood mental health/education. Kelsey is incredibly passionate about the well-being of the West 7th neighborhood and feels honored to be part of the Federation as an Area Two Coordinator.  

 Hayden Kilkenny is originally from Wisconsin, but has lived in the West 7th neighborhood over 20 years, both as a renter and a homeowner. She resides with her husband and four children and cat. Hayden was a long time board member of the League of Women Voters of St Paul before joining the Fort Road Federation. She is also the president of the St Patrick's Association, which sponsors and organizes the St Patrick's Day Parade in downtown St Paul each year. Hayden enjoys the many hangouts and dives this neighborhood has to offer and can often be found in one of them at any given time.  

Devin is originally from southern Minnesota but has lived in the Greater Twin Cities area since 2006.  He and his family moved to the West 7th neighborhood in 2023 and were drawn to the area’s history and close sense of community. 

Devin attended the University of Minnesota where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science and has worked in the technology consulting and staffing industry for most of his professional career. 

When he’s not working on renovations to their family’s west end century home, you’ll find Devin biking to one of the many parks in the neighborhood with his three daughters and their dog, Roy. 

 Tanya Fabyanske Beck has lived in the West 7th neighborhood since 2004, when she discovered her house on a flyer in the hands of another patron at the Spot Bar. She has fallen in love with our small businesses, goodwilled neighbors, and incredible urban outdoor space. She loves exploring Victoria Park down to Crosby Farm Park with her husband Jon, their kiddo Kai and dog Q*bert. 

She joined the board in 2019 hoping to impact the board’s representation of the diversity of people and interests in our neighborhood; she would love to see you at a committee meeting!
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Tanya has worked in non-profit housing for 15 years and is passionate about tenants’ rights. She serves on the board at Joseph’s Coat in addition to being Area III Coordinator and Community Engagement & Outreach Committee Chair for the West 7th / Fort Road Federation. 

 J.B. Shank has lived in St. Paul for almost a quarter century after moving to the city with his wife and two boys in 2000 to start the job he still holds as a Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He began his St. Paul life as a bungalow owner up in the city highlands near to Macalester, St. Kate’s, St. Paul Academy, and Mattocks Park, which has a claim to being the dandelion-covered baseball field that Charles Schulz had in his imagination when writing his Peanuts series. Raising two kids in a bungalow with one car was generally a wonderful experience – the park across the street certainly helped – but after two decades of anxiety about his inability to properly maintain his hundred-year old home, he happily sold the empty family nest in 2021, eventually relocating with his wife to the River Flats neighborhood in a corner rental apartment in the V2 complex on Otto Avenue overlooking the river. Both of his boys were educated in the Saint Paul Public Schools (Central High School Classes of 2012 and 2o14), and one still lives in the cities, although he recently relocated to that other city to the west of us. J.B’s wife of 36-years Alison has worked for Saint Paul Public Schools since 2001 as a Teacher of English as a Second Language to immigrant adults at the Ronald H. Hubb's Center for Lifelong Learning on University Ave near Lexington. They are both internationalists in spirit and practice, and have lived extended periods out the country together as a family in Paris, Tuscany, and Utrecht in the Netherlands, and for Alison in Addis Ababa, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Tanzania, and Thailand.    
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J.B is excited to be residing in his new neighborhood and is eager to fulfill a life-long promise to himself to become more involved in local politics through work with the Fort Road Federation. An avid reader of the Villager for over two decades, he is particularly passionate about development issues, especially those connected to Green agendas and the improvement of the material infrastructure and social fabric of the neighborhood. A bike commuter during the non-iced months, and a transit commuter year round, the River Corridor project has long been an obsession for him, and he looks forward to playing a part in generating the new planning initiatives that must be resurrected from the ashes of that ill-starred initiative. An enthusiastic user and advocate for St. Paul’s Evie electric car-share program, he also looks forward to working for an extension of this service into the West. 7th neighborhood, and to helping promote all manner of Green initiatives around bicycles, including e-bikes and scooters, transit, and a better and  more green neighborhood for pedestrians, pet owners, and anyone who prefers, like him, to avoid automobiles except when absolutely necessary. He is also a Twin Cities sports fanatic of a certain sort, with a deep passion for women’s basketball – he is a season ticket holder for the Minnesota Lynx and the UMN Lady Gophers basketball teams – and football in the international sense, meaning soccer, with a long-time commitment to Minnesota United FC. You can find his name etched in the giant aluminum UNITED structure on Snelling Avenue in front of Allianz Field.