Alliance Hires Midwest Field Representative

We are happy to welcome MaryKay O’Donnell, who joined the Land Trust Alliance’s Midwest Office as a Field Representative on March 12, 2007.  She comes to the position with nearly twenty years of experience in conservation work.  Building on her interest in teaching and mentoring, MaryKay is excited to join the Land Trust Alliance, and looks forward to working directly with land trusts across the Midwest region. 

MaryKay was trained in land conservation by some of the best in the business – the folks at The Conservation Fund.  She worked as a Field Representative in the Fund’s Western Regional office for seven years. Coordinating with private landowners and government agencies, MaryKay helped to protect over 500,000 acres of land in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and South Dakota.  

A Midwesterner at heart, she left the Fund in 1998 to head up the Land Protection Program at the Little Traverse Conservancy in northern Michigan.  During her nine years with the Conservancy, MaryKay negotiated donations and purchases of both fee land and conservation easements, managed real estate due diligence items on projects, and partnered on several collaborative conservation efforts.  She also spearheaded an effort to revise the Michigan Model Conservation Easement, and drafted new land protection criteria for the Conservancy. 

Prior to her work with The Conservation Fund and the Little Traverse Conservancy, MaryKay worked for the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy.

She and her husband, Mark Grosvenor, a high school math teacher and baseball coach, are enjoying raising their two boys, Kyle and Jack, in the small town of Harbor Springs, Michigan.

(posted 3/16/07)