The Franklin Land Trust has hired a new executive director with 40 years of non-profit management experience.
Thomas S. Curren succeeds Richard Hubbard, who has served as the trust’s executive director since 2004, and during whose tenure the trust reached the 32,000-acre mark in conserving farms, forests, wildlands and other natural resources in western Massachusetts.
Curren served as vice president of marketing and development at the Crotched Mountain Foundation, executive director and president of the Lakes Region Conservation Trust, and as director of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Northeast Land Trust Consortium, where he worked with landowners, donors, and volunteers to preserve more than 800,000 acres of conservation land in New England, New York and in the Amish farmlands of Pennsylvania.
In addition to his conservation work, Curren has been the owner and operator of an independent dairy farm. He and his wife, Kathy Neustadt, live on 108 acres with their Hereford cattle, Romney sheep and a flock of New Hampshire red hens. He has been a local selectman, town moderator, and town historian, has served as a trustee of the Crotched Mountain Foundation, now serves on the board of Old Sturbridge Village and chairs the board of Folk New England, a traditional music archive housed at the University of Massachusetts Library at Amherst.
“The Pioneer Valley has always been a hearth away from home for me,” said Curen. “As a boy, growing up in rapidly-developing Melrose, the river and hill towns along the Mohawk Trail were proof to me that there was life before, and possibly even after suburbia. I have long admired the work of the staff at FLT, and I’m excited at the prospect of joining with them and with the citizens of the region to continue protecting and preserving the land and the heritage that we love.”
Curren begins work May 1.
Paul Cooper, FLT’s Board president, said of Curren: “He is truly a man for all seasons: as a dairy farmer, as a leader in conservation at the staff and grantor levels, and, most recently, as a consultant with Historic Deerfield, he has long devoted his energy to citizen-based conservation at all levels. Tom is experienced, creative, charming and gregarious. We look forward to introducing him to the larger community.”