National Association of Conservation Districts

2010 CEO Address

NACD 2010 Annual Meeting • January 31 - February 3, 2010 • Orlando, FL

Jeff Eisenberg, NACD Chief Executive Officer
2010 CEO Address
February 1, 2010

Hello. I am Jeff Eisenberg, your new Chief Executive Officer for NACD. I must tell you how thrilled I am that your leadership has chosen me for this critical position for conservation. I am so excited to be here with you.

I strongly believe the single greatest challenge facing conservation today is to extend its reach among the public. Conserving our resources, being good stewards of the earth, is a sacred calling. This will not happen unless conservation makes sense to the men and women who make a living by managing or cultivating the land. Only NACD has the network to reach this people. No one, no other organization, has NACD’s capacity for delivering conservation on the ground on private, public, and urban lands.

I have spent my entire career on resource and conservation issues in a variety of staff and leadership capacities. With your help, I will work to make NACD the conservation leader in this country. We will all need to pull together to make this happen. I am fired up to get to work on this important mission!

Let me tell you a little about myself and then a little about where I see us going. I was born in Minneapolis. I have an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in Scandinavian Studies and Political Science, and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I worked for eight years in the Office of General Counsel, USDA, on Forest Service and NRCS legal issues. I then worked for the Nature Conservancy for four years on farm bill conservation programs and invasive species. The last seven years I’ve been the Executive Director for the Public Lands Council. I have various kinds of legislative and administrative experience with many agencies at USDA, Interior, Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Elinor, my wife of more than 18 years, is from Brooklyn, New York and we have two children and a dog. Jacob, our eldest son is entering college next year, and our daughter Johanna, is almost 15 and a typical teenage terror; then there is Maxie, a flat-coated retriever, the easiest member of the family to get along with, after me of course. We live in Arlington, Virginia and love it there.

My goal is to build on the work already begun by NACD, state associations, and districts to make our collective organization a conservation powerhouse. Strengthening our collective public profile will strengthen the effectiveness of our policy advocacy, increase funding opportunities, and strengthen individual districts. As you all know, and I am learning, we are unrivalled among conservation and environmental organizations for our network of conservation practitioners who deliver conservation on the ground. We should be more broadly recognized as this leader. I will use every ounce of my energy to harness this network for the common good of conservation districts and the national association in three key areas:

1. Policy: Farm bill hearings will start this spring. My goal is to work with our members to pull together a farm bill position that increases conservation opportunities in ways that make sense for producers on our farms and ranches, public lands, and landowners in urban areas. The key will be for NACD to agree on common goals early enough for the goals to have an important impact on framing the Farm Bill debate among decision makers on the Hill and in the Administration. Our position should also seek to strengthen districts’ role in delivering these programs.
   
   We will produce a framework in short order for the development of our position. NACD region staff and leaders will work with local districts to develop and drive the content of a position, and the CEO and Board of Directors will make the organization’s final decisions about the product. This process will hopefully further energize our many members to work together on achieving common goals and serve as a blueprint for future activity in support of policy as well as fundraising efforts.
   
   
2. Funding: I want to help diversify the income streams for the national office and districts. Funders want to give money to groups that can make a difference on an environmentally significant scale. No one is better-positioned to do this than us. We will work with our members and identify partners to really ramp up our efforts to increase funding. Whether or not we succeed will depend on the interest and energy of districts to identify large-scale project and to work cooperatively with other districts and outside partners to make conservation at this scale. The National office will organize and facilitate the effort and make the necessary contacts to gain funding, but as with everything with our group, we will only succeed if the local districts and regions enthusiastically get involved.
   
   
3. Service to members: In addition to supporting districts through policy work and increased funding, NACD must also provide the infrastructure that districts need to thrive. I will work to increase support for the states in three key areas:

• Leadership development: I want to establish a leadership development program that begins with identifying and developing leaders at the grassroots level and allows them to realize their potential through state and national leadership opportunities.  Building leadership at the grassroots level provides stronger leaders at each level.
• Connecting with our members locally: Whether it is through web conferences, webinars, video streaming, or simply more frequent conference calls, I want NACD to strengthen its connection to our members locally through the use of new and emerging technologies, and most importantly through a more concerted effort to extend personal contact.
• Strengthening local board governance: Strong conservation districts have boards that govern rather than manage. They are visionary and focus on the big picture of governance—fundraising, marketing, outreach, etc. NACD will help districts through training, communications, conferences, and more to help grow local programs.   

If we work together on these matters, we can be stronger both collectively and individually. I’m excited about our common mission and want to succeed with each of you. My personal goal for this meeting is to meet as many of you as possible. So, please come up to me, introduce yourselves, tell me what I might be able to do to help, what NACD has been doing well, what we can improve on, and what we can and should be working on together.  Better yet, invite me to your state or community to come learn first-hand about your conservation district and its work. Working together, we will make NACD America’s Voice for Natural Resource Conservation.