While Rita's professional experience was in tertiary healthcare for 25 years, she pursued her passion for the natural environment by joining the Boxborough Conservation Trust board in 2003, where she has served as president since 2006 overseeing the conservation of 63 acres in 4 transactions and has had a robust sampling of the issues confronting small, all volunteer land trusts. She serves on the Town of Boxborough’s Community Preservation Committee and the Land Stewardship Committee, founded the Boxborough Birders, and is a board member of the New England journal Bird Observer. She’s a graduate of University of Michigan, Boston College (Macy Fellow) and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Kellogg Fellow).