The next Director of the South Mountain Partnership has been hired!

The South Mountain Partnership and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy are pleased to announce that Katie Hess has been selected as the next Director of the South Mountain Partnership. Ms. Hess will begin her tenure with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy on August 17th.

Katie has a degree in landscape/regional design and planning from Pennsylvania State University (Master of Landscape Architecture, 2012) and graduated from Hood College (BA in Environmental Science and Policy, 2006). She joins the Partnership from the Pennsylvania Bureau for Historic Preservation, the state agency that works to conserve Pennsylvania’s historic and cultural resources.

Katie is a native of the South Mountain landscape, having grown up in Franklin and Adams County – where she learned how important a factor the land can be in shaping our quality of life and identity. Her experiences have led her to be an advocate for conserving resources, preserving ‘sense of place,’ and community self-determination, and her work focuses on collaborating with others to create culturally, environmentally, and economically sustainable solutions to community challenges.