Executive Director Susan Hindinger Announces Her Departure
To the VCE community,
With a mix of excitement and sadness, we write to report that Executive Director Susan Hindinger has decided to retire from VCE at the end of this year to tend to her family obligations.
Susan’s decision is a joyful if bittersweet one, and arrives at a time when VCE is in a strong position, with excellent leadership and staff and a stable financial foundation.
After 13 years at VCE, first as an associate director and then as Executive Director, Susan has overseen remarkable growth, and stewarded VCE through challenges and changes within and without. She helped VCE navigate the pandemic, with strong contingency planning and emergency management. She stepped into the Executive Director role in 2022, steering the organization to a new, post-pandemic work culture, and providing continuity in this transition from the founding executive director Chris Rimmer.
Susan effectively spearheaded VCE’s current strategic plan, facilitating rich discussions with the science team about where they hoped and imagined their work could lead. She wrapped up the successful All In for Biodiversity campaign, helping to raise more than $5 million, then oversaw the growth of the organization from 10 to 22 staff members, including the expansion of development and communications teams that operate in support of the science program.
Through this growth, Susan has broadened VCE’s capacity to advance biodiversity conservation and science-based decision making through innovative new projects on new taxa and species, while maintaining a focus on the organization’s flagship research, long-term monitoring, and community engagement through a growing group of enthusiastic volunteers. Susan has also cemented VCE’s role as a leader in the Vermont conservation community through building new partnerships and collaboration with other organizations in the nonprofit and academic communities to effect meaningful change grounded in science.
Because VCE is secure and thriving—the best time for an organization to undergo a leadership transition—this feels like both the right time for Susan to step into her next career phase, which will include business development for her family’s engineering company and providing some consulting services. Susan will be here through at least the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition.
VCE’s mission, strategy, and goals are not changing. We will continue our long term monitoring projects alongside our new, innovative research projects. We’ve expanded the ways community scientists from all walks of life can contribute to conservation and will continue to do so. And we’re excited to continue to educate folks in the Northeast, the Caribbean, and beyond about conservation and biodiversity.
VCE has a great reputation—we’re confident that we’ll find a new Executive Director with the experience and enthusiasm to steward it into its next phase. The board and staff will be casting a wide net in our recruitment efforts in the coming weeks. We would welcome your help! See the job posting here, and please reach out to Search Committee Co-Chairs Clive Wood or Dan Lambert if you have suggestions or ideas for someone who might be a good fit.
We thank the broader VCE community for all your stalwart support as VCE has expanded its ambition for addressing our biodiversity crisis through science and community. We’re here and available if you have any questions at all.
Sincerely,
David Mears
Chair, VCE Board of Director
Susan Hindinger
Executive Director
