Catherine Scott Joins Alliance as Chief Operating Officer

We are delighted to announce that we have selected Catherine Scott to serve as Chief Operating Officer of the Land Trust Alliance starting September 17. As COO, she will manage operations for the senior directors for all conservation programs, education, finance, policy, communications, information services and technology, and fundraising.

A graduate of Dartmouth College and an attorney trained at Stanford Law School, Catherine has done exemplary work in the nonprofit, government and private sector, amassing the right combination of experience we need to lead the Alliance as we face new challenges. For the past seven years, she has served as the Director of Land Conservation for the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), where she supervises seven senior directors and field offices. In that role, she has been responsible for all land conservation activities, easement outreach, training, GIS, fundraising, policy, transactional work and stewardship. While working at PEC, in partnership with Virginia Outdoors Foundation, more than 130,000 acres were protected by conservation easements. She also developed PEC’s stewardship program and launched nine regional Land Conservation Funds. Catherine was closely involved in our campaign to stop the Joint Committee on Taxation recommendations and to pass the new federal tax incentives for conservation, as well as working on implementation of and reforms to the Virginia Land Preservation Tax Credit.

Previously at The Nature Conservancy, Catherine was the Senior Policy Advisor for International Programs, Government Relations, and then Senior Advisor for International Policy, Latin America and Caribbean Division. In that capacity, she launched a Private Land Conservation Initiative to promote private landowners conserve their properties, and to promote improved policy at both local and national levels. Previously she worked on international environmental policies on biodiversity, multilateral development bank strategies, NAFTA side agreements, while also serving on various boards and councils. She was a liaison for the President’s Council for Sustainable Development and the Enterprise for the Environment Council.

Earlier in her career, she worked as a financial analyst for Morgan Stanley & Company and as an Attorney-Adviser for the US Department of State, where she provided legal advice on a wide range of arms control issues including START II negotiations, chemical weapons, and dismantlement of weapons in the former Soviet Union.

We are honored to have someone of Catherine Scott’s caliber joining as a new leader for the Land Trust Alliance team. We are sure her successes at PEC and The Nature Conservancy will extend to the Alliance as we build our new programs on policy, training and accreditation, conservation easement defense.

posted 6/21/07