I enjoyed working with George Gilliam -- he's an excellent lawyer and teacher. And one of the important lessons I learned from him was to work at what you love -- and I love public service (corny as that sounds).

So when The Nature Conservancy offered me a job focused on the Piedmont of Virginia, I jumped at the opportunity. The Nature Conservancy works to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. As the Director of our new Piedmont program, I will be overseeing our efforts in this region.

The Nature Conservancy uses science to identify where we work--in the Piedmont we'll be focused on areas that are large enough and intact enough to meet our goal of protecting the representative diversity of life in this region. Where our missions overlap, we plan to work with others in the area--like the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Blue Ridge Foothills Conservancy, the Rivanna Conservation Society, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, and others--to protect and restore critical habitat, including the headwaters of the Rivanna and the Southwest Mountains.

Ridge Schuyler (electronic mail, January 22, 2002)