About Historic Chevy Chase DC

Last updated October 2026

Historic Chevy Chase DC is an all-volunteer historical society 501(c)(3) dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and sharing the unique history of our circa-1907 community. The organization was founded in 1990 and has an active 12-member board of directors and a volunteer program director.

HCCDC Board of Directors:

OFFICERS

Mark Auslander, president
Mark Auslander joined the HCCDC board in 2023 and took over as president in September 2026. A historical anthropologist
with strong interests in Africa and the African Diaspora, Mark has undertaken field research in Zambia, South Africa, and in the US deep south. A museum professional, he has consulted on diverse exhibition projects and served in leadership positions in university museums and museum studies programs. He has published extensively on historical remembrance, ritual performance, art and aesthetics, and the comparative dynamics of enslavement and freedom-making. Mark’s prize-winning book “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family” (University of Georgia Press, 2011) re-reads American racial politics under slavery and post-slavery through structuralist approaches to mythology and kinship. He has taught widely in anthropology and museum studies, and currently serves as an adjunct lecturer in anthropology at American University. Mark grew up in Chevy Chase DC, and returned to the neighborhood in 2023 with his wife Ellen. He has particular interests in histories of race, enslavement, and liberation struggles in Chevy Chase, the District of Columbia, and the wider Tidewater region. His personal website is at https://markauslander.com/.

Charles Cadwell, secretary (past treasurer 2025-2026 and past president 2010-2014)
Chas Cadwell has lived in Chevy Chase DC since 1981 and been a member of Historic Chevy Chase DC since 2007, serving in several important capacities. He also served as ANC 3/4G-07 commissioner from January 2020-January 2021 to fill a board vacancy. An Urban Institute Fellow, Chas worked on international development issues. He had prior stints at the University of Maryland, the Small Business Administration, the White House Office of Consumer Affairs (when there was one) and private law practice. A Massachusetts native, he still owns his parents’ 18^th Century saltbox in a rural town, where his interest in early political and economic history began.

Zach Ferguson, treasurer
Zach Ferguson, who joined HCCDC’s board as secretary in September 2026, grew up in St. Petersburg, FL, and lives on Jenifer Street with his wife and children. He has a degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He enjoyed learning about Chevy Chase history, current events, and meeting neighbors by serving as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and treasurer from 2023-2024. Professionally, Zach is an attorney for the federal government.

BOARD MEMBERS

Nadia Afrin
Nadia Afrin leads communications at a global health non-profit. For the past 22 years, she has worked with NGOs and international organizations like the World Bank, UNICEF, and the International Finance Corporation to tell stories that inspire action and drive social impact. Whether tackling child marriage, improving access to health, fostering financial inclusion or advancing vaccines, she brings a data-informed approach to communications that connects people to purpose. Nadia has been on the HCCDC board since 2021 and has applied her expertise in editing recordings of HCCDC video productions. In her free time, she loves stargazing and making short videos. Nadia is a Bangladesh-American who has called DC home since 2001. She lives in Chevy Chase DC with her husband, parents, and son.

Catherine Toups Atkinson (past vice president 2016-2026)
Cate Atkinson, a surgical recovery nurse, has been a Chevy Chase DC resident since 2015 and writes an occasional blog for the HCCDC website called “HOUStories” about the social history of houses. She grew up in Texas with seven brothers and sisters. Her first career was in print journalism, covering metropolitan news in the DC area for The Washington Times and the Journal newspapers before striking out in 1993 as a foreign correspondent in the Balkan War. She was United Nations Bureau Chief in New York City for The Washington Times from 1994-96. She has a master’s in international journalism from the University of Southern California, and eventually went back to school for a nursing degree at Georgetown University. She lives on Chevy Chase Parkway.

Ron Eichner
Ron is an urban infill developer focused on walkable and sustainable neighborhoods in Washington, DC. In his long career he has worked on impactful projects such as Washington Harbour on the Georgetown Waterfront, Market Square on Pennsylvania
Avenue, and the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria. He has also worked on numerous smaller projects in historic districts, including U Street, Capitol Hill, and Takoma. In an earlier life, he earned a Masters in Architecture and worked for a decade for the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation. That work was recognized by a Loeb Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A third generation Washingtonian and the grandson of a Diamond Cab taxi (#522) driver, he fondly remembers cruising downtown with Grandpa Dave. His family has roots in SW (pre-urban renewal), H Street NE, Kennedy Street, Riggs Park, and Shepherd Park. Only later in life did he understand how that history was a pretty typical path of white flight.  He is a 50-year resident of Chevy Chase DC. Ron is on the Board of Trustees of the DC History Center. He also actively supports efforts advocating smart growth and affordable housing in the District and is currently a member of the ‘Champions’ Council’ for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and a founding member of Ward3Vision and Chevy Chase Forward, groups that advocate for environmentally responsible and socially equitable growth in the DMV. Ron has been an HCCDC member since June 2026.

Tanya Gaskins Hardy
Tanya Hardy was born and raised in McLean, VA, and retired after 41 years in education, the last 24 years as a Fairfax County Public Schools Behavior Specialist. Upon retirement she founded a genealogy service, A View of The Past, an outgrowth of her love of history and genealogy. She started dabbling in genealogical research 30 years ago and has traced her lineage to the 1700s. Together with her father Robert Gaskins she wrote a book about her maternal ancestry titled “From Buckingham to Ballard – A Genealogical Study of Thomas Mac Agee and Caroline Walker.” Tanya’s company has assisted more than 50 clients with genealogical research in a variety of projects. Most recently she and her colleague James Fisher have worked with historians to delve into the story of Capt. George Pointer — Fisher is a seventh-generation direct descendant — whose descendants were dispossessed of their land along Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC because of racism in 1928. Tanya is a member of the National Genealogy Society and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.

Sarah Joyce-McCarron
A resident of McKinley Street for 33 years, Sarah Joyce-McCarron is a retired art educator in Montgomery County Public Schools. She worked in several Title 1 schools and collaborated with artists in residence on large installations in a variety of media. An experienced project leader, she procured grants and coordinated projects from inception to completion with myriad artists, with the objective to involve students in art making. Following retirement, she continued to teach in the Chevy Chase DC community, creating an opportunity for children to work in her studio and outdoor garden, exploring nature and making art. “I loved able to offer something to families in our neighborhood during such a difficult time,” she recalled. It is local art collaborations that drew her to join the board of HCCDC, with the intent of managing the HCCDC Call Box Beautification Program that the late HCCDC Board Member Ed Hayes Jr. initiated. In 2023 she applied to be one of the artists for a call box project and was accepted to design and restore the box near the Carnegie Institute honoring Vera Rubin. Fellow artists Danielle Feullian and Laura McCarron worked with her on the project. Their mosaic is mesmerizing, just as the stars captivated Vera Rubin as a young girl. “I feel passionate about the call box program. It is a powerful way to honor Chevy Chase DC history and add beauty to the neighborhood,” she said.

Jocelind Julien
Jocelind Julien was born in Washington, DC, as the youngest of three children to Rose Gangemi Edwards and Marshall Edwards, Jr. Through her father, she is a direct descendant of Caroline Branham, George and Martha Washington’s personal enslaved servant. Caroline Branham’s great-great-granddaughter, Rosa Branham Shorter, was the matriarch of the Shorter-Dorsey family, who resided on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase, DC, for more than 50 years. Rosa Shorter is Jocelind’s great-grandmother. Jocelind is an active descendant member of Black Broad Branch, Chevy Chase, DC. and was elected in 2025 to serve on the HCCDC Board. She has served as Treasurer on the Board of Directors for the League of Descendants of the Enslaved at Mount Vernon, VA, and is a descendant member of the Arlington House Descendant Family Circle. Professionally, Jocelind is an alternative dispute resolution practitioner. She currently serves as the director and mediator for the Anne Arundel County Office of the State’s Attorney Mediation Center. She resides in Columbia, Maryland.

Carl Lankowski (past president 2014-2026)
Carl Lankowski served as president of Historic Chevy Chase DC through enormous change for the organization. Now retired, Carl enjoyed a three-phase career as a member of university faculties, a think-tank research director, and as coordinator for European area studies at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (2000-2020). Pro bono service managing sister-city relationships sensitized him to local-global connections.  During the Clinton administration, he was active in advancing the Transatlantic Environment Dialogue. He has been a resident of Chevy Chase DC since 2010 and northwest DC since 1990. Carl has also lived and worked in Aarhus, Denmark, Bonn and Konstanz, West Germany, and Brussels, Belgium. Read about his McKinley Street NW  house on our House Histories page.

Connie Rosemont
Connie Rosemont has lived in DC since 2012 in an apartment building on upper Connecticut Avenue just steps from the shops and restaurants north of Livingston Street. Prior to her time in DC she lived for 16 years in Concord, New Hampshire, where she was co-founder and Executive Director of a three-screen nonprofit movie theater. Connie currently works as a search consultant for a small executive search firm that specializes in placing museum professionals nationwide. She has a strong interest in community life, walkable neighborhoods and thoughtful, inclusive urban planning.

Keene Taylor, Jr.
Keene Taylor has lived and worked in Chevy Chase DC for nearly 60 years since moving here as a child in 1963 and has served on the HCCDC board since the mid-1990s. His work in residential real estate through his family business, Taylor Real Estate, has enabled him to acquire deep knowledge of the architecture and social history of our community, and his celebrated Historic Walking Tour of Chevy Chase DC each fall is always in high demand. His only time away from his hometown was during his tenure at Rice University in Houston, and after graduating he returned here to work for the engineering firm of Booz, Allen Hamilton. In 1989, he changed careers to join his family business. He has been involved in numerous HCCDC projects in addition to his walking tours, including a historic-district research effort and publication of the coffee table book, Lafayette Life.

Richard W. Teare (past treasurer 2002-2024 and past president 2007-2009)
Dick Teare served as the long-time treasurer of Historic Chevy Chase DC and was also acting president for a brief period.  His father was an architect with strong interests in historic preservation; Dick says he inherited the interest but not the architectural talent. He was a Foreign Service Officer for just shy of 40 years, with overseas service primarily in Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Laos) and the Southwest Pacific (New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea) and related assignments in Washington.  In retirement, he directed the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies in the Georgetown School of Foreign Service for several years.  He has worked as an election official in every cycle starting in 2004 and is now captain at Precinct 51, Lafayette School, where each of his three children studied for at least a couple of years, long ago.  He now has four grandchildren as well. 

VOLUNTEER PLAQUE PROGRAM MANAGER

Carolyn Chamberlain Nazdin — House Plaques Program Manager
Carolyn and her husband Joel, were both raised in Montgomery County, MD, and are retired empty nesters with a blended family of five adult children and one grandchild. In 2017 they acquired an HCCDC plaque for their 1919 Legation Street bungalow purchased in 2014. Since Carolyn became HCCDC’s volunteer plaque program manager in late 2024 she has delighted in meeting neighbors and applying her backgrounds in art history, real estate, and business to research houses and assist residents with designing and purchasing HCCDC plaques. She is especially gratified that each transaction is a learning experience and that it culminates in a long-lasting, custom-made memento displayed for other community members to enjoy, too.

Past HCCDC Officers and Board Members:

The 1990 founding members of HCCDC include Mary Rowse, Reena Racki, Charles C. McLaughlin, Todd Kosmerick, Pierre Paul Childs, William West Hopper, and Jill Schatken.

Listed in alphabetical order are previous board officers and members: Wendy Adams, Betsy Amin-Arsala, Walter E. Beach, Jordan Benderly, Paul Bennett, John Blackburn, Jenny Chesky, Donna Crisalli, Kamer Davis, Andrea Dean, Krystyna Edmondson, Robert Ellis, Stephanie Faul, James Fisher, Douglas Lee Frazier, Chris Fromboluti, Riordan Frost, Donetta George, Colleen Girouard, JoAnna Graham, Joan Solomon Janshego, Tim Hannapel, Edward Hayes, Jr., Doris Ingram, Ford Isanhart, Bill Jones, Pam Lankowski, Brian McClure,  Alix McDonough, Nancy McKinley, Beth Merritt, Toby Millman, Betty Nock, Susan Parry, Kathy Petersen, Ted Pochter, Rick Price, Edith Roberts, Jill Schick, Steven Seelig, Nancy Slade, Jessica Springsteen, Judy Stein, Keene Taylor, Bob Truax, Harold M. Voorheis, Marelise Voss, Esther S. Washington, Dick Wattis, Jeff Wilde, Bob Zich, and Steve Zipp.

Contact Us/Membership

We welcome any comments or questions about HCCDC and/or our website — email us at hccdc@comcast.net. If you wish to become a member or volunteer, and if you want to join our email list, just let us know by email. We will alert you of events, news and posts. Here’s how we can be reached:

Historic Chevy Chase DC
PO Box 6292, NW Station
Washington, DC 20015-0292
email: info@historicchevychasedc.org