Katie Michels

Katie is a graduate student at Yale University, studying land conservation and community development. She has worked at the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board and a Vermont-based foundation, in roles providing funding and technical assistance to farms and nonprofits. She has worked for land trusts in Vermont, Maine, and Montana. She plans to continue to work in the intersections between land conservation, land stewardship, and rural economic development. She hopes her work will support ecologically resilient and just communities where both people and nature have the resources they need to thrive. Katie loves how land conservation makes explicit the public interest and public good that can come from open land, and works to protect those public interests in perpetuity. She thinks land is one of our greatest shared resources. Being in the woods or along water is where I feel most at peace. Katie loves how TPL lives into the belief that access to land should be available to all. They work both quickly and with slow, careful intention to protect important places. And she loves how their work has changed through time.