Maura McDermott

Maura McDermott has been Communications Director for the Kerr Center since 1998. She is responsible for the center’s website, newsletter, and public relations as well as publication production and multimedia.

Maura is co-author with Kerr Center president Jim Horne of The Next Green Revolution: Essential Steps to a Healthy, Sustainable Agriculture, published in 2001 by Haworth. In 2005-7 she managed the Kerr Center’s Oklahoma community foods grant/project and edited the centennial report on Oklahoma’s food system, Closer to Home: Healthier Food, Farms and Families in Oklahoma.

Before joining the center, Maura was a contributing editor and award-winning writer for Oklahoma Today magazine. She also taught high school and college English. Her college education includes a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma and teaching certifications in secondary English, journalism, history and biology from Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah. She has lived in Thailand and Indonesia and travelled extensively in Asia.

Maura grew up in south Florida, but after thirty-five years in Oklahoma considers herself an Okie. She and her husband Ron Wood live on the Wood family farm near Checotah, where they enjoy gardening and amateur astronomy.