Meet Ashley Demosthenes, the Land Trust Alliance's new CEO

The Land Trust Alliance recently announced the selection of Ashley Demosthenes as its new CEO, and the organization officially welcomed her to the position on March 17. Demosthenes brings more than 25 years of conservation and land trust experience to the Alliance, including serving most recently as the CEO of South Carolina’s accredited Lowcountry Land Trust, where she steered the conservation program to achieve a new milestone of 100,000 acres of protected land; as of today, Lowcountry Land Trust has protected more than 163,000 acres. She has also been an active member of the Alliance's board of directors since 2023.

Meet Ashley below, as she talks about what brought her to the Alliance and her goals for the future.

“Ashley embodies a deep passion for private land conservation grounded in broad conservation experience and firsthand work with the Alliance, making her the ideal candidate to take over as Alliance CEO," said David Calle, chair of the Land Trust Alliance board of directors and co-chair of its CEO search committee.

Prior to her time at Lowcountry Land Trust, Demosthenes spent 15 years with The Nature Conservancy in South Carolina as its ACE and Savannah River Basins project director and as the organization’s associate director of land conservation. She is also the co-founder and board chair of the South Carolina Land Trust Network.

“Ashley’s deep well of experience in the land trust community has armed her with the qualities we need to take the Alliance forward, including the understanding that lasting conservation is founded on cultivating relationships between people,” said Blair Calvert Fitzsimons, governance chair of the Land Trust Alliance board of directors and co-chair of its CEO search committee.