Last March, the Land Stewardship Project announced it had named Jess Anna Glover as Executive Director of both LSP and Land Stewardship Action Fund (LSAF).
In an email that was sent yesterday and was forwarded to Bluestem Prairie, the organization announced that the Stewartville native had resigned on February 12.
The email:
We, as members of the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) and Land Stewardship Action Fund (LSAF) boards of directors, are writing to inform you that on Friday, Feb. 12th, Jess Anna Glover resigned as the executive director of LSP and LSAF.
We have accepted her resignation and have proposed to engage Jess Anna as a consultant to help the boards and management team take over her responsibilities. The boards of both organizations are working to ensure a smooth transition to future leadership, including hiring an interim executive director.
As board members, we express our deep gratitude to Jess Anna for the passion, energy, and vision she brought to her work during the past 10 months.
Despite spending her tenure with us in the midst of a global pandemic and working at the epicenter of a national racial justice uprising, Jess Anna led staff in advancing the missions of the Land Stewardship Project and the Land Stewardship Action Fund, as well as strengthening our ability to take on new challenges. She added new depth to our work in the areas of racial, gender, and rural economic justice, as well as challenging corporate control of our food and farming system. Internally, Jess Anna worked with LSP’s programs to implement a major overhaul of the organization’s departmental structure, empower new leaders, and put in place a pay equity initiative.
Transition is never easy, and it’s been a challenging year in so many ways, for so many people, including members of our staff. During this time of transition, our commitment to you as members is to continue to fulfill our mission — fostering an ethic of stewardship for farmland, promoting sustainable agriculture, and developing healthy communities.
As members of the LSP and LSAF boards, we have the highest confidence in the staff of these two organizations as we move forward together in this next chapter.
We are very fortunate to have a staff that is committed to working with members like you to continue to build our nationally-recognized work on soil health, beginning farmer training, and land access. In addition, our policy organizers are working with members on the state and federal level “fighting the worst while advancing the best,” including pushing for a moratorium on mega-dairy operations and putting in place groundbreaking soil health/climate change legislation. And the recent elections demonstrated the power that the Land Stewardship Action Fund brings when we organize with farmers and other rural residents in support of elected officials who will advance public policies that are good for people and the land.
As was mentioned above, the LSP and LSAF boards will be working with staff on putting in place interim leadership. We are also beginning discussions around LSP’s long-term leadership model.
If you have any questions on this transition or LSP and LSAF’s work in general, don’t hesitate to contact board members [redacted]
However, if you have a relationship with another board member, feel free to connect with any of us using the contact information below. You are also welcome to contact LSP staff member Brian DeVore at [contact information redacted]
Members like you, through your support and passion for stewardship and justice on the land, create a rock-solid foundation that makes our work powerful and effective, even during these trying times.
Thanks to you, the roots of these organizations provide the kind of depth required to remain resilient, no matter our changing daily circumstances.
We are excited to continue to develop this resilience and to see what we can accomplish together in the future.
We don't have any details about the resignation.
Glover came into the executive director last March with a strong record of advocacy after a well-planned transition following the retirement of long-term ED Mark Schultz:
A veteran advocate for independent family farmers and sustainable rural communities has been named as the Land Stewardship Project’s new executive director, the organization’s board of directors announced today. Jess Anna Glover will take over from Mark Schultz, who is wrapping up a three-decade career with the nonprofit, membership-based farm organization. Glover will also serve as director of the Land Stewardship Action Fund (LSAF), a sister organization to the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) that works to promote and expand people-powered organizing in the context of public elections.” . . .
Glover grew up in the southeastern Minnesota community of Stewartville in a family of farmers and community leaders. Raised by a single mother who was a teacher and founder of the town historical society, Glover learned the importance of being a part of a rural community. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota Law School and was a Policy Fellow with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Glover started her legal career focused on numerous agricultural issues while with Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG) in Saint Paul. Among other issues, she worked on corporate concentration in agriculture, equitable federal disaster assistance, federal farmer lending programs and immigrant farmer outreach.
While with FLAG, Glover also served on a team of attorneys that challenged the federal commodity checkoff program, which farmers, including LSP members, had maintained was forcing them to support a type of agricultural model that was putting them out of business. That case, which LSP and other members of the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment were deeply involved in, eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004. . . .
She spent more than a decade with Education Minnesota, a statewide member-run organization, representing teachers and school employees. Most recently, Glover was the executive director of MENTOR Minnesota, which supports over 200 mentoring programs throughout the state. . . .
In 2019, Schultz announced his intention to retire as LSP’s executive director after more than 30 years of working for the organization in various capacities. He created and directed LSP’s nationally-recognized Policy and Organizing Program, and served as the organization’s associate director before taking over as executive director in 2017.
During his tenure as the head of the organization, Schultz deepened LSP's involvement in work related to soil health, racial justice and corporate accountability. He also spearheaded the creation of the Land Stewardship Action Fund. Shortly before he announced his retirement, Schultz worked with members and staff to create “Vision for the Future: Stewardship, Justice, Democracy, Health and Community,” a long-range plan that lays out the organization’s priorities for the next five years.
Glover was the fourth leader of the organization, which was founded in 1982. We wish the organization well in its search for an new executive director.
Related recent posts:
- Land Stewardship Project has published a thoughtful fact sheet on white supremacy
- From Land Stewardship Project: MN leg protects farmers from foreclosure through harvest time
Image: Jess Anna Glover, center, at a meeting in Mankato. Via AgWeek.
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