Caren Glotfelty

Caren Glotfelty is senior director of The Heinz Endowments’ Environment Program. Under her leadership, the program’s grant making has expanded to promote smart growth and land use at regional and state levels, recognizing that ecologically sound development is an essential component of economic prosperity and environmental protection. She was a major strategist in the production of the Brookings Institution study of sprawl in western Pennsylvania, “Back to Prosperity,” and in the subsequent creation of the Campaign to Renew Pennsylvania, which is working for policy reform. Caren, who joined the Endowments in 2000, also led in the creation of the foundation’s environmental health focus. The Environment Program continues to support efforts to clean up the region’s industrial legacy of contaminated land, dirty water and polluted air. But it also is building networks of health and environmental groups; funding research and communications; and working with health care institutions, emphasizing the connections between health and environment. After earning a master’s degree in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania, Caren spent much of the early years of her career working in Pennsylvania and Maryland state government on policy and planning issues involving land use and water quality. During Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey’s administration, she became the first deputy secretary of water management for the state Department of Environmental Resources. Subsequently, she held the Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resources at Pennsylvania State University. Caren has been honored many times for her career accomplishments, including being named co-chair of Gov. Tom Ridge’s 21st Century Environment Commission in 1998. She received a Three Rivers Environmental Award from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council in 2000; the Friend of Pennsylvania award from 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania in 2004; and a Pennsylvanians Lighting the Way award from Gov. Ed Rendell and his wife, federal appeals Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, in 2005.