Katherine Romans selected as Executive Director of Hill Country Alliance

The Board of Directors of the Hill Country Alliance (HCA) is proud to announce the selection of Katherine Romans to serve as full-time executive director of HCA. The selection was made after a nationwide search. Katherine will fill the vacancy created when founding HCA executive director, Christy Muse, departed in February to join the Shield Ranch.
“We could not be happier to have Katherine step into the role of Executive Director,” said Dr. Leo Tynan, President of the HCA board of directors and chair of the search committee. “With her unique insight into the organization’s history, mission and culture, Katherine is in a perfect position to seize this opportunity to bring a transformational change to HCA and the region.”
Katherine brings a decade of nonprofit and legislative experience to the organization. She worked on national and international natural resources issues for several years as a legislative aide within the U.S. House of Representatives and has experience with both local and national nonprofit organizations.
For the past five months, Katherine served as the interim executive director of HCA, and has three years of leadership experience within the organization, most recently as the director for landowner outreach. In that role, Katherine developed the Pedernales program, working to connect landowners to grant opportunities and technical expertise within the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), hosting educational events, and launching a campaign to address invasive species in the upper reaches of the basin. She has secured and managed nearly $350,000 in grant revenue in her time with HCA.
“In my view, Katherine Romans is the perfect choice for this key Hill Country leadership position,” said Andrew Sansom, Executive Director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University.  “In a relatively short time, she has built a strong track record of relationships and trust with public officials, landowners, and other leaders in the region and has demonstrated her commitment to both its continued economic prosperity and its very precious natural resources. I am very excited to be able to work with Katherine in this new role.”
“I look forward to building on the momentum and strength that has been growing around the Hill Country Alliance for the past ten years,” commented Katherine. “We are increasingly seen as the go-to organization for issues of growth and natural resource management in this region. My top priorities in the coming years will be to hone our program focus areas, build on existing relationships across the region, and increase the collective impact of our work to create an economically vibrant Hill Country that maintains its rural character and resilient natural resources.”
Katherine said she is particularly optimistic about the opportunities for collaboration across the many groups and agencies focused on the Hill Country. “Our organization is uniquely positioned to leverage the work of our many partners to achieve conservation success in the region. HCA has always strived to be a convener, and in an era of increasing pressures from development and population growth along the eastern edges of the Hill Country, we can achieve more together than individually.”
Katherine holds a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies where she focused her work on urban forestry and green infrastructure.
About the Hill Country Alliance
Founded in 2005, the Hill Country Alliance is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to raise public awareness and build community support around the need to preserve the natural resources and heritage of the Central Texas Hill Country. The Alliance represents more than 8,000 supporters across the region. To learn more about Hill Country Alliance initiatives, please visit the HCA website: www.hillcountryalliance.org.