During the summer of 2016, Dave Brown became president of HHLT, taking over from Charlie Johnson, who stepped down after eight years leading the organization.

Dave writes:

“I first became aware of Harpswell’s special combination of forest and ocean as a teenager when my family came to visit the log cabin my grandparents built on the shore. Jane Covey and I spent our honeymoon in that cabin, visited it with our children as they grew up, and thirty years later began spending our summers in the property’s old farmhouse on Cundy’s Harbor Road. Eventually we converted the barn to be our current residence.

I worked for many years on the problems of international development, focusing particularly on the challenges facing nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations trying to catalyze sustainable political and economic change in developing countries. Jane and I founded and ran a nonprofit thinktank called the Institute for Development Research for twenty years. I also taught organization behavior and development for four decades at Case Western Reserve, Boston University, and the Harvard Kennedy School.

My first contact with the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust came as our family explored how to put my grandfather’s property under a conservation easement. Decision-making that involves nine people with diverse views is not easy, but over ten years of discussions we came to consensus about working with HHLT to protect the forest and shoreline that our grandparents loved.

I have now been on the HHLT board for six years, chairing the Accreditation Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee as well as serving on the Stewardship and Executive Committees. I am particularly interested in how HHLT can work with a wide range of partners to enable the community’s human and natural systems to thrive together.”