EPIC Board of Directors

Epic is managed by an unpaid volunteer board of directors. Our directors come from diverse equestrian backgrounds, but share a common passion for promoting and protecting Montgomery County’s Agricultural “Ag” Reserve and the equestrian community.

Michael Rubin | Chairman

Mike helped found EPIC in 2006 and is its current chairman. He is the chairman and president of Capital Investment Associates Corporation a real estate development company. Seeing a need to protect Montgomery County’s agricultural reserve, Mike became actively involved in land preservation. He has worked with public and private land/farm preservation programs and institutions to preserve over 4000 acres of land in upper Montgomery County. He works with local historic preservation boards to repair and maintain historic structures and to place land in conservation on the many properties he controls in Montgomery County, Aiken, South Carolina and Burke County, Georgia. He is founder and a board member of the Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA), a farming and land preservation advocacy group. He also serves on the board of the Audubon Naturalist Society of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Allan Noble | president

Allan Noble is a retired Maryland and District of Columbia trial attorney. He and his wife Kathy live on a small farm in Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve with their horses, dogs and cats. They have been active trail riders in upper Montgomery County for over 50 years. Before his retirement, Allan was active in endurance and competitive trail riding. He has served as the president of the Boyds Civic Association, Boyds Federal Credit Union and Sugarloaf Riding Club. In the longest zoning case in the history of Maryland, he successfully led the Boyds Civic Association in the community’s battle against a proposed massive quarry and industrial complex in the Agricultural Reserve. Eventually, Mike Rubin purchased the quarry site and placed it in Agricultural Reserve where it is now part of EPIC’s Breezy Loop trail complex. 

TOM GUtierREZ | Vice President

Tom has been a practicing attorney for 40 years, having founded and served as a partner in a boutique communications law firm since 1985. For the last 20 years, Tom’s true loves have revolved around open spaces and horses in Montgomery County, Maryland. He rides with the Montgomery County-based Potomac Hunt and Goshen Hounds, and he’s been a member of the TROT and PBHTA riding clubs. Tom was active in establishing the Montgomery Countryside Alliance, which is dedicated to preserving open space in the county, and he has served two terms as a director for the Alliance. He was a founding member of EPIC in 2006 and served two terms as a director prior to becoming vice president in 2020. Tom has been active in numerous county governmental matters and has testified in multiple grassroots efforts to preserve open space.   

Kayla Gatalica | Treasurer

With a background in teaching and public school administration, Kayla Gatalica is a Program Officer in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, where she manages programs that support professional exchanges for teachers in the U.S. and around the world. She is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University and holds a master’s degree in International Education Policy from Harvard University.  After surviving childhood cancer, Kayla successfully convinced her parents to pay for riding lessons. She began her equestrian journey in the world of Western Pleasure, where her goal was to trot as slowly as possible. Now, she’s an avid trail rider with endurance aspirations, so her goal is to trot (or gait, depending on which of her two horses she is riding) at a moderate pace for as long as possible. Because distance riding takes up a lot of Kayla’s free time, her husband Joe learned to ride, too, in hopes of spending more quality time together. The two of them enjoy family trail rides followed by a couple of cold beers. Kayla is a member of the American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC) and the Eastern Competitive Trail Riding Association (ECTRA). 

Anne Davies

Anne Davies is a retired federal executive, having spent some 30 years managing various parts of the Department of Energy’s Magnetic Fusion Program. She owns a farm in the Agricultural Reserve where she has lived for over 40 years. An avid trail rider and foxhunter, she serves on the boards of the Potomac Hunt and Montgomery Countryside Alliance, which advocates for the Agricultural Reserve. She has served on the county’s Agriculture Preservation Advisory Board and currently serves on its Rustic Roads Advisory Committee, as well as on a Maryland Horse Council task force on the Shared Use of Public Lands.

DebBY Price

Before retirement, Debby was a regional marketing representative with Alcoa. She joined the EPIC board in 2014. She became involved in trail conservation and equine activities in the mid-1980’s when her family moved to a farm in the Ag Reserve. She has held a variety of leadership positions in the Seneca Valley Pony Club ending up as the Co District Manager, a position she has held from 2010 to the present. Seneca Valley Pony Club is a nonprofit organization that operates under the guidance of United States Pony Club. Its mission is to teach good horsemanship while building skills in leadership, teamwork, sportsmanship, responsibility and awareness of community and land conservation. Debby is also a member of the Potomac Hunt and acts as a liaison between the Hunt and the Pony Club.