Heather Furman, Appalachians Director

Heather Furman is the Appalachians Director at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a position she has held since June 2023. In this role, Heather guides continental scale conservation for one of the Conservancy’s four global priority landscapes, leading teams and initiatives across 18 states and 3 Canadian provinces.  Prior, Heather spent a decade as TNC’s Vermont State Director, where she grew the visibility, influence, and scope of the chapter’s conservation programs. Heather has held leadership positions in both federal and state government, and with local and international NGO’s including the World Wildlife Fund in Nepal. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia, building on her formal academic training in Anthropology, BA from the Ohio State University and with a MS in Natural Resource Planning from the Rubenstein School at the University of Vermont. She is passionate about critical habitat conservation, strengthening partnerships, and mobilizing the funding and research needed to protect biodiversity while mitigating the impacts of climate change. Heather resides with her husband in the Winooski River Valley in rural Vermont, on the unceded land of the Western Abenaki that is known today as the Northern Appalachians.