Kitty’s nonprofit career has spanned more than three decades on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. She was appointed the first Executive Director of the Maria Mitchell Association, a diverse science center and historic house museum honoring America’s first woman astronomer and women’s rights advocate; and during her 17-year tenure she led several multi-million-dollar campaigns to renovate and build facilities and endow staff positions. In 2007, she became the first Executive Director of the start-up Linda Loring Nature Foundation which now encompasses more than 275 acres of protected conservation land. The property is a wildlife sanctuary with gentle walking trails through globally rare sandplain grasslands, a robust climate resiliency and rare plant species research program, and an environmental literacy program that empowers our community to develop a sense of place by deepening their connection to the natural world.
She became actively involved in ANCA after attending her first Summit in 2009 at Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. Since then she has served on numerous committees, presented at Summits, and served on six ANCA Consult teams. She believes that the peer-to-peer learning with her ANCA colleagues has enabled her to develop her leadership skills and strengthen her passion for the nature center and environmental education field.
On Nantucket, Kitty previously served on the boards of the Nantucket Lighthouse School, a pre-K through 5, independent school; the Unitarian Church, Nantucket Community Music Center, and Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. She grew up in Pennsylvania, graduated from Cedar Crest College with a degree in biology, and worked in a microbiology research lab at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. She has lived on Nantucket since 1987 with her husband, Tom, and their two Siamese cats, Comet and Coral. They maintain a large garden of native plants attractive to a diverse abundance of birds. She is the beloved Nannie to three beautiful grandchildren who love snakes, crickets, roly-poly bugs, birds, and the ocean.