Molly McUsic

The Wyss Foundation funds non-profit groups from The Nature Conservancy to The Wilderness Society to preserve large landscapes and wildlife habitat through advocacy, land purchase, and public-private partnerships. Since 1996, non-profits funded by the Foundation have succeeded in protecting nearly fourteen million acres of land in the inter-mountain west. Prior to joining the Wyss Foundation, Molly served in the Clinton Administration as Counselor to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. During her tenure at Interior, McUsic oversaw the designation of National Monuments under the Antiquities Act, the principal vehicle used by President Clinton to protect more land in the lower forty-eight than any President since Teddy Roosevelt. Molly worked on nine different national monument designations - including President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldier’s Home and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. She also negotiated the largest land exchange in U.S. history - an agreement that officials from Utah and the federal government had been trying, and failing, to accomplish for 50 years. While at Interior, Molly testified numerous times in House and Senate Hearings on land exchange and conservation legislation. Before joining the Clinton Administration in 1997, Molly was a tenured professor at the University of North Carolina Law School, where she taught Property, Labor Law and Natural Resources Law. She has published articles on natural resources, takings law, school finance litigation and education reform. Molly is a high honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a major in economics, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Harvard Law Review. She also clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Harry A. Blackmun.