Vice President of Conservation

Heritage Conservancy seeks a dynamic and effective leader to lead and oversee the
Conservancy’s Conservation Programs.

Since its founding in 1958, Heritage Conservancy has worked with many partners to protect
from development 17,000 acres of open space, farmland, wildlife habitat, and important
watershed areas throughout Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and in the surrounding area. As key elements of the organization’s emerging Strategic Plan, the Conservancy will focus on both accelerating the pace and scale of its own land protection efforts and expanding its role in catalyzing and supporting others’ efforts. This position will be a key leader in both of these
initiatives, leading teams of acquisition specialists and land stewards to maximize our impact.

The core responsibility of this position is to lead the Conservancy’s overall Conservation
function, establishing strategic direction, priorities, performance expectations, and
organizational alignment across land protection, easement stewardship, and fee-owned
property stewardship in service of the organization’s Strategic Plan, including:

• Update the Conservancy’s framework for identifying land protection priorities.
• Shift the Conservancy’s operational approach to land protection in a more strategic, targeted direction.
• Increase the volume of active projects in the Conservancy’s land protection portfolio and the rate of completing protection projects.
• Expand and deepen the Conservancy’s relationships with municipalities, counties, and
  state agencies, to keep land conservation at the forefront of public agendas and help
  catalyze new rounds of public funding for land protection.
• Ensure the alignment and effectiveness of the Conservancy’s conservation easement
  stewardship activities, including monitoring and legal defense of easements.
• Ensure the alignment and effectiveness of the Conservancy’s stewardship of its
  fee-owned properties, including a growing portfolio of habitat improvement projects and projects to encourage and facilitate public visitation.

• Lead the organization’s identification of priorities for easement or fee acquisition.
• Lead senior level relationships with municipalities, counties, state and federal agencies,
  and other land protection and funding partners.
• Provide executive oversight of the Conservancy’s land protection portfolio, including
  major, complex, or strategically significant fee and conservation easement transactions.
• Ensure projects are aligned with organizational priorities, funding capacity, risk
  considerations, and Board policy.
• Ensure effective engagement of the Conservancy’s Board of Directors and its Property
  Committee with the Conservancy’s Conservation Programs.
• Develop and advance strategies to expand public and institutional funding available for
  conservation across the Conservancy’s service area.
• Provide executive oversight of the Conservancy’s conservation easement stewardship
  program, including risk management, policy, legal defense, and significant enforcement
  matters. Guide the team in planning and implementing remedial actions. With the Chief Operating Officer and Legal Counsel, ensure compliance with and effective use of the organization’s Terrafirma legal defense insurance.
• With Legal Counsel, identify and respond to threats to the Conservancy’s portfolio of
  protected lands posed by utility/transmission expansions, condemnation proceedings,
  road development, etc.
• Provide executive oversight of efforts to amend older easements to bring them up to
  modern standards and improve long-term conservation outcomes, including increases in protected acreage, strengthened protections on sensitive resources, and reductions in enforcement & administration liabilities.
• Ensure the Conservancy’s land…