Our Staff

Mikki Sager
Vice President
Office: 919.967.2223, x126
msager@conservationfund.org

Mikki Sager was resourceful from the start. Growing up in suburban area of Pennsylvania, Sager and her three siblings turned the creek behind their house into an ice rink and converted the overturned tree in their backyard into a lookout tower. Sager kept on adventuring, ultimately becoming a competitive kayaker and canoe racer, selling whitewater apparel and working as a guide to the thrills of kayaking, hiking and climbing in western North Carolina.

This is a woman who gets the power of “place.”

But Sager also gets people. And it’s this combination—place and people—that has defined her role at The Conservation Fund for nearly two decades. Sager heads our Resourceful Communities Program (RCP), which helps North Carolina’s rural communities address persistent poverty by tapping natural resources to create jobs and strengthen economies. Sager and her team train community leaders and foster peer-to-peer learning to help communities create new economies that work on the so-called “triple bottom line”—environmental, economic and social returns on investment.

That bottom line suits us well. What makes the Fund different from most environmental organizations is our dual mission: to not only protect our environment but also strengthen our economy. “Rather than pitting people against each other and telling them they have to choose between jobs and development or clean air and water, we help them figure out ways to do both,” Sager says. “We help them balance the priorities in their lives, use limited resources more wisely and effectively and make better places for future generations to live and work well.”

Sager says her work is all about listening. She has negotiated in board rooms, walked farms with property owners, debated in parking lots, presented in community centers and spent enough time talking on road trips that the numbers on her cell phone were worn away. Through it all, she has gleaned some powerful lessons about how tightly people are connected to our land.

And still the conversations continue. There is much to do.

Cynthia Brown
Program Specialist Office: 919.489.9790
sojournergroup@nc.rr.com

When Cynthia Brown describes her life, she says, “I’m always where I’m supposed to be.” Fortunately, she was out strolling in Durham, North Carolina, one October morning nearly a decade ago, when she bumped into a neighbor working with The Conservation Fund. Several conversations later, Brown found herself delivering a keynote talk at the first Grassroots Convening, a statewide gathering of community, government, business and environmental leaders hosted by our Resourceful Communities Program (RCP).

We recently held our 14th Grassroots Convening. Brown was again a central figure, but this time, she was a leader in organizing the event. For nearly a decade, Brown has become an increasingly important member of RCP, which helps North Carolina’s rural communities address persistent poverty by tapping natural resources to create jobs and strengthen economies. First working as a consultant and now as a part-time staff member, Brown helps administer RCP’s small-grants program and provides training and technical assistance for the community groups that are our grassroots partners.

Brown has devoted her career to helping people build capacity to transform communities, from serving as a city council member to competing in a Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Today, with RCP, she continues this community legacy by advising partners like Asheville GO, which trains “disconnected” young adults for green collar jobs, and the Spaulding-Monroe Alumni Association, which is renovating a historic African-American school as a community center in rural Bladen County. Brown is helping these community organizations develop strategic plans and assess progress, offering solutions and new opportunities as the organizations grow.

As she puts it: “One reason I love working at the Fund is that our success is not just measured by the number of acres conserved, but also by the ways we empower people in the community to have control over their own lives.”

Kathleen Marks
Associate Director
Office: 919.967.2223, x111
kemarkstcf@earthlink.net

When Kathleen Marks was a kid in North Carolina’s Sandhills region, family trips to state forests and national parks gave her memories, a few mosquito bites and a lifelong desire to connect people with nature.

She started, appropriately enough, with kids. After college, Marks taught at Sunflower School, a Chapel Hill preschool that encourages kids to get creative outdoors. In Marks’ favorite project, students used natural materials to design and build a 12-foot-tall giant, who now keeps watch over the playground.

In 2004, friend Mikki Sager recruited Marks to The Conservation Fund’s Resourceful Communities Program (RCP), which helps North Carolina’s rural communities address persistent poverty by tapping natural resources to create jobs and strengthen economies. As associate director, Marks administers RCP’s small grants program and leads efforts to coordinate partner training like RCP’s Peer Learning Visits, in which partners share successes and challenges.

The best part of the job? For Marks, it’s the people: “I’m consistently amazed at the incredible things our partners accomplish with few resources.” As an example, she points to a project highlighted at RCP’s 2009 Peer Learning Visit: To bolster the economy of rural Robbinsville, residents transformed a historic schoolhouse into the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center, which RCP helps support. The center attracts visitors and also serves the community with classes for all ages, an arts and crafts gallery, a commercial kitchen for local growers, live entertainment and more. Robbinsville now welcomes more than 10,000 visitors each year who come to experience the area’s colorful heritage.

In fact, RCP has supported dozens of North Carolina communities like Robbinsville, awarding more than $1.8 million in grants, leveraging $18 million for partners, creating more than 300 jobs and training 5,000 leaders to date. But Marks says there’s still much to do. Many of the state’s rural communities struggle to stay afloat. RCP’s “triple bottom line” approach—blending sustainable economic development, environmental stewardship and social justice—is needed today more than ever before.

Monica McCann
Associate Director
Office: 919.967.2223, x110
mmccann@conservationfund.org

Monica McCann knows firsthand the raw beauty—and tough choices—of life in low-income rural communities. McCann’s family comes from western Mexico, which her parents left to start over in the United States. Growing up among the trolley-traveled streets of San Francisco, McCann often returned to Mexico, visiting the village where many of her relatives still live.

Today, as an associate director of our Resourceful Communities Program, McCann dedicates her days to helping people in rural North Carolina communities thrive right at home by sustainably using the natural resources in their own backyards to create jobs and strengthen economies. McCann joined RCP in 2004 after working in Ecuador with the Peace Corps and earning a graduate degree in environmental planning.

McCann leads key RCP projects, like the creation of the first forest in North Carolina—and the southeastern United States—that is both community owned and managed. Located in Hoke County, this 532-acre forest will protect habitat for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, create jobs related to the forest-products industry and generate revenue for the local economy through timber and pine straw sales. With all that return on investment, the project truly meets RCP’s “triple bottom line” goal of sustainable economic development, environmental stewardship and social justice.

“The best part of my work is seeing results—seeing what can happen when you truly engage a community and give them the resources they need to succeed,” McCann says.

Susan Sachs
Consultant
Office: 919.493.4438
susan@starfireconsulting.org

Susan works with RCP partners as a trainer, facilitator and technical assistance provider in the areas of strategic planning, program development, fundraising, grant writing, evaluation and board/staff relations. With 20 years of experience in nonprofit management, professional coaching and organizational development, she takes a holistic approach to working with grassroots partners to support them in building capacity and planning for long-term sustainability. She is principal of Durham-based Starfire Consulting.