Gilges Elected to Endowment’s Board of Directors

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) announced today that Kent Gilges of Canandaigua, New York, Managing Director at Conservation Forestry, LLC, has been elected to its Board of Directors. “We couldn’t be more pleased that someone with Kent’s breadth of experience and commitment to stewardship of forest resources would join us in our important work,” said Mack Hogans, Endowment Chairman.

“I’ve watched the Endowment as it has grown in just six short years to be among the leaders in working forest conservation in North America,” said Gilges. “I’m humbled and excited to play an active role.”

Before joining Conservation Forestry, Gilges was the Managing Director of Finance and Acquisitions at The Nature Conservancy. In that role, he was primarily responsible for identifying, structuring and financing transactions on behalf of the largest conservation organization in the world. He managed the acquisition of over 800,000 acres of land. He was also the lead for The Nature Conservancy in the establishment of an integrated protection plan for the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, in which he had overall responsibility for a project which created five million acres of new parks and secured the conservation of over 20 million acres in a mosaic of protected areas and sustainably managed forests. Gilges was on the board of the Forest Stewardship Council from 2003 to 2007. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, Kent managed the European bureau for McGraw-Hill’s trade magazine, Chemical Engineering, and wrote for a number of magazines and newspapers. Kent has degrees from Cornell and Oxford Universities.