Katie Hess

Director of South Mountain Partnership

Katie coordinates the South Mountain Partnership, which was launched in 2006 and is a public-private partnership between Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy that has grown into an alliance of citizens, businesses, non-profits, academic institutions, and local, state and federal government agencies and officials collaborating to envision and secure a sustainable future for the South Mountain landscape region.

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 joined the Partnership in August 2015 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, where she learned how important a factor the land can be in shaping 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.