Phyllis Hall Mentors the Next Generation

It’s a Friday morning at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, and the phone rings at the guest relations desk. Volunteer Phyllis Hall answers, and her calm-yet-authoritative voice coaches the caller through rescuing the injured American Kestrel in their back yard. “Don’t give it any water, no food of any kind,” she says, scribbling quick notes to pass along to the rescue volunteers.

It’s the fourth or fifth in a series of calls this morning, and for each, Phyllis has a welcoming voice and a reassuring answer. She’s also managing the ticket window (busier than you might expect for a Friday during the school year) and training a new volunteer in all of this. It’s a lot to manage by any standard, but Hall’s calm demeanor never wavers. It’s easy to see why she has been named the Volunteer of the Year at both the Center for Birds of Prey and Audubon Florida, and why her name constantly comes up when talking about effective, extraordinary chapter leaders.

Long before she began volunteering at the Center in late 2021, Hall was on the conservation committee of Orange Audubon Society, and later moved to Seminole Audubon Society, which is closer to her home. She has served as Seminole's president since 2020. Through her chapter involvement, she became a mentor for Audubon Florida’s Conservation Leadership Initiative, which pairs undergraduate students with conservation professionals for a year of learning and mutual benefit. Since 2017, Hall has had seven mentees.

It’s as a mentor that Hall really shines: Now retired, Hall spent much of her career in adult education and hospital training, giving her decades of experience in teaching, mentoring, and supporting learners. She holds a master’s degree in training and education.

“I enjoy being around young people and learn so much from them,” Hall says of her CLI mentorship. “My role is to listen and encourage, which is rewarding for me.”

Though Hall has taken a step back from CLI mentoring this year, she’s turned her talents to mentoring other volunteers at the Center, creating detailed training manuals that have helped the program cross-train more volunteers. She stays in touch with her past CLI mentees and has written letters of recommendation for several. Two of her mentees have served on the Seminole Audubon board of directors, working directly with her as president. She even had the chance to attend the induction ceremony of her 2021-22 mentee into the University of Central Florida’s Pegasus Society, a particular moment of pride for her.

Audubon strives to maximize our collective impact, building a diverse community of bird and nature lovers and mobilizing to create positive change. The CLI program is one example of this, infusing fresh ideas and enthusiasm into chapters, but keeping CLI students engaged beyond their year of mentorship is not easy, Hall says. By nature, the college students in the program are transient, moving on to grad school or careers, often in far-flung locations. Early career professionals also have much less time to volunteer, compared to retirees like herself. To reach younger generations, Hall recommends outreach at local elementary, middle, and high schools. Earlier this year, Seminole Audubon delivered a seminar at a private school in Oviedo, giving students an overview of the organization’s history and current initiatives and taking them on a “bio-bingo” walk. They also led an event for Earth Week at an Oviedo elementary school in April.

Chapters engaging children is less about recruiting members and more about sharing the joy of birds and the work of conservation with the generations who one day will be charged with carrying on that work. Hall’s appreciation of nature is infectious, and she loves sharing it with the public on chapter programs and in her role as a guest relations volunteer at the Center for Birds of Prey, where she says she never stops learning.

“I love seeing that ‘a-ha’ moment when I tell guests something they didn’t know,” she says. “I learn something new every time I am at the Center, either from staff or other volunteers.”

Where Hall has recently scaled back some of her mentoring, she has taken on conservation causes at the local level, working with government committees to protect Central Florida ecosystems from development. It’s yet another way she’s found to use her calm, unwavering voice to speak up for birds and they places they need.