BOARD OF DIRECTORS
RALPH BECKER (CHAIR) served as Mayor of Salt Lake City from 2008 to 2015. He currently serves as Director of the Central Wasatch Commission, an agency of state and local jurisdictions working to advance the Mountain Accord agreement. He served 11 years in the Utah House of Representatives (1996-2007), including five as House Minority Leader. Prior to his legislative service, he was Utah State Planning Coordinator under Governor Scott Matheson and served on the Salt Lake City Planning Commission. He co-founded and worked for 22 years at Bear West, a community and environmental consulting firm. Throughout his career, Ralph has worked to serve communities across Utah, and to preserve the state’s remarkable scenic character. He is founding Chair of the Board of Scenic Utah, and served for six years as a board member of Scenic Utah's parent organization, Scenic America.
PAULA FRYLAND is former executive vice president of Commercial Banking at Zions Bank, where she also served as executive vice president and director of consumer and business banking. In 2017, she was listed among Utah Business magazine’s “30 Women to Watch.” Paula has 30 years of experience leading change and innovation in the banking industry. Prior to joining the company, she spent 25 years with PNC in increasing roles of responsibility, most recently as President of the Philadelphia, Delaware, and Southern New Jersey markets. She also served as an Executive Vice President in the PNC Financial Service Group and later led PNC Healthcare. In 2007, she was named by Treasury and Risk magazine as one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Finance.
JOHN HUEBNER (Emeritus) was born in Michigan and spent much of his career in Greenville, South Carolina. Motivated by billboard blight and the increasing power of the outdoor advertising industry, he co-founded Scenic South Carolina in 2001. In 1987, he founded Mor-Lite, a company that pioneered energy-efficient lighting technology in Greenville. Since then, Mor-Lite technology has been installed in thousands of industrial plants, distribution centers and retail stores throughout the U.S. John earned a degree in urban planning from the University of Mississippi, and later worked as an urban planner in Greenville. He also served as President of Greenville’s Beautification Commission; in that role he wrote the city’s first sign ordinance. He was Chairman of Leadership South Carolina, where he met scores of people across the state who shared his passion for scenic preservation and limiting visual blight. Not long after back-to-back hurricanes in 1985 thwarted his plan to sail around the world, in 1999, John married the late Deedee Corradini, former Salt Lake City Mayor (1992-2000) and moved his company to Utah to be closer to Deedee and her family. After many years in Park City, he recently moved to La Jolla, CA, where lower altitude helps combat the effects of a lung disease. Thanks to remote-meeting technology and John’s ongoing commitment to protecting Utah’s natural beauty, he remains an honorary member of the Scenic Utah Board.
TY MARKHAM co-founded the nonprofit grassroots organization Mormon Environmental Stewardship Alliance ("MESA"), where she continues to serve as a board member. In 2009, she retired from her position as clinical psychologist at the University of Utah Pain Management Center (1994-2009) to develop a wellness retreat in Torrey, Utah – the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park – where she now runs a seasonal business. She served a four-year term on the Torrey town council, and twice ran to represent her district in the Utah State House of Representatives. Ty spends much of her time during the off-season in Salt Lake City, where she is a citizen lobbyist advocating for environmental protections and for Utah's scenic public lands.
RICH MELVILLE is a Utah native and a Utah County resident since 1958. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University. His love of Utah and its beauty was mentored by his parents, who served on the Utah Air Pollution Committee and were firm believers in being stewards of Utah's beauty. He has been a small business owner and operator for the last 50 years in Utah County (Melville Stables). Rich started a grass-roots campaign to help protect the night sky and eliminate visual blight, especially near residential areas, in an effort to preserve the quality of life for home-owners in Utah.
DOUG MORTENSEN is a Salt Lake City trial attorney. Recently retired from day-to-day practice, he is currently involved in a number of community projects. He is an Honorary Lifetime member of the Utah Association for Justice. An active member of Rotary International, he and his wife Vicki spent several months in Santa Cruz, Bolivia with Ascend Alliance working on programs to help people ascend out of poverty. Doug is an adjunct professor of business law and ethics at Westminster College and a certified masters swim coach. He has explored and appreciated many of our region’s scenic wonders – beginning with his early adventures in the Uinta Mountains and at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and has enjoyed climbing several of Utah’s majestic mountains, including King’s Peak, Lone Peak, and Mount Nebo.
JANET MUIR, a fifth generation Utahn, is one of the co-founders of the dark sky program at the University of Utah and has been involved with a number of National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management dark sky accreditations. She is a former chair of the Advisory Board of Center for the Living City. Janet worked in business and legal positions at The New Yorker Magazine, Esquire Magazine and the media practices of Deloitte and McKinsey & Company.
MICHELLE ORTEGA is a professional voice-over artist and Chief Marketing Officer at Hispanic Marketing Factory, helping clients become more competitive and inclusive. She began her radio and TV career at age 16 in her hometown of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After moving to the US in 2003 to complete a degree in Broadcast Journalism at BYU, she worked as TV and radio host and producer for Alpha Media in Salt Lake City. She later worked as Multicultural Marketing and PR Coordinator for Zions Bank, overseeing multi-media campaigns and community events. In 2010, she was named Miss Utah Latina, a role that strengthened her sense of community and social responsibility. She served as Volunteer and Community Outreach Coordinator for The Children’s Center, a Utah-based non-profit providing mental health services for underprivileged children, and in 2020, she received the ‘Voice Arts Award’ from the Society of Voice Over Arts and Science for Best Spanish Performance in the category of Outstanding Spoken Word or Storytelling. She is thrilled to join Scenic Utah’s efforts to preserve our state’s natural beauty and unique scenic resources.
STAFF
Kate Kopischke, Director
Kate is a Wyoming native who worked for 20 years as a mediator and dialogue facilitator in the international development arena. She co-founded Scenic Utah with her husband, Ralph Becker, in 2018. She lived for 22 years in New Mexico, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in intercultural communication – while also discovering the wonders of the Colorado Plateau. Kate spent five years in Washington, DC as a mediator with World Bank Group before moving to Utah in 2010. A life-long hiker and cyclist, she now dedicates the bulk of her professional time to working to protect Utah’s unparalleled scenic resources.
Kaye Mickelson, Operations Manager
“Retired .. but not tired!” is Kaye’s introduction to her current life position. With a professional management career in business and industry corporations, higher education, health care, including research in world health outreach, political administrations, and non-profit organizations, Kaye brings to Scenic Utah, a lifetime of knowledge and operational implementation integrity from a variety of work environments. Dedicated to using the learnings of a lifetime committed to mission driven organizations, Kaye joined Scenic Utah as Operations Manager to help build Scenic Utah as a sustainable, efficient, and economically sound organization. She intentionally calls Utah “home” and is passionate about preserving the uniqueness of the beauty Utah offers.
Brady Wyllie, Volunteer Data Manager
Brady is a recent master’s graduate from the University of Texas at Austin. Raised in Utah and Southern California, he enjoys hiking, biking, backpacking, and watching the Jazz. Before graduate school, he received degrees in math and finance from the University of Utah. He wants to make the case for protecting the scenery and environment of Utah through a deeper look at the data.