Celebrating conservation trailblazers during Women’s History Month

Each year, March is designated Women’s History Month by presidential proclamation. The observance traces its roots to Santa Rosa, California, when in 1978 the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a “Women’s History Week” celebration — at the time, they selected the week of March 8 to correspond with International Women’s Day. As the movement spread across the country, a group of women’s groups and historians — led by the National Women’s History Project — successfully lobbied for national recognition, and in February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women’s History Week. Congress would eventually pass Public Law 100-9 in 1987, designating March as “Women’s History Month.”

Below, we celebrate women who have enriched the conservation community through their outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation. Each has been selected by the Land Trust Alliance and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to receive the distinguished Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award.

Mavis Gragg, attorney and co-founder of Conservationists of Color (2024)

Mavis Gragg is co-founder of HeirShares, an organization that delivers comprehensive educational content, data and technology to empower heirs' property landowners and attorneys dealing with heirs’ property issues. She is a founding member of the Conservationists of Color, an affinity group creating space for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement to connect. Gragg is also a member of the Land Trust Alliance’s Conservation Defense Advisory Council and served on its Common Ground Advisory Council, which laid the groundwork for the Alliance’s community-centered conservation program.

“The word that comes to mind when I think about Mavis is ‘connector,’ because that’s what she does — she connects people to each other and she connects people to the resources they need to achieve their land goals,” said Jennifer Miller Herzog, interim president and CEO of the Land Trust Alliance. “Mavis came to conservation through people, focusing on family land retention following her own family’s experience with heirs’ property. And in her work, she has continued to put people first with a tirelessness and a generosity of spirit that is unmatched.”

Laura Johnson, conservationist and co-founder of the Lincoln Institute’s International Land Conservation Network (2023)

Laura Johnson is a life-long conservationist with more than 35 years of experience in non-profit management. In 2014, she co-founded the Lincoln Institute’s International Land Conservation Network. Johnson is a past president of Mass Audubon where she spent 14 years leading the country's largest independent state Audubon organization. Prior to joining Mass Audubon, she worked for 16 years at The Nature Conservancy as both a lawyer and in positions including Massachusetts state director and northeast region vice president. She is also a past chair of the Land Trust Alliance board of directors, and a former Bullard Fellow at Harvard University.

"Laura Johnson has been an invaluable contributor to the land trust movement in the United States and across the globe,” said Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “Her energy, her personal dedication to the cause and her remarkable diplomatic skills have been key to the recent evolution of the practice of private and civic sector land conservation from Canada to Chile and China.”

Lillian "Ebonie" Alexander, executive director of the Black Family Land Trust (2022)

Alexander is the executive director of the Black Family Land Trust in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has helped countless families retain their land assets for future generations. There, she designed and implemented the African American Land Ethic and Wealth Retention and Asset Protection programs. She is the first person of color to serve on the board of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Currently, she sits on the board of the Virginia United Land Trusts — a coalition of land trusts in Virginia — as well as the American Farmland Trust and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

“Ebonie is a leader in a space where she had to be a true pioneer and innovator,” said Andrew Bowman, the Alliance’s former president and CEO, and the current president and CEO at Defenders of Wildlife. “Those qualities have allowed her to be the driving force behind innovative programs and state policy changes in support of landowners who have historically been overlooked. She has moved land conservation beyond its traditional boundaries.”

Jane Difley, now-retired president and forester of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (2020)

Jane Difley was the first woman to lead the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, and during her tenure, the organization more than doubled the size of its conserved Forest Reservations to 56,000 acres and was involved in protecting more than 290,000 acres overall in the state. Difley also served as the executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council and prior to that, she was with the American Forest Foundation as vice president of forestry programs and national director of the American Tree Farm System. She was the first woman to serve as the president of the Society of American Foresters. A colleague at the New Hampshire Historical Society described her as having been “busting into boys’ clubs her whole career.”

“Jane Difley has had a remarkable career as a pioneering leader in conservation,” said Levitt. “She is certainly beloved in New Hampshire, where she served at the helm of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests for the past 23 years.”