Jane Elder is the executive director of the Wisconsin Academy. She brings to the Wisconsin Academy a strong background in public policy leadership, nonprofit management, and involvement in Wisconsin arts. Her career has focused on environmental policy and communications, while personal interests include theater, modern dance and painting. Jane was the founding director of the Sierra Club’s Great Lakes program, and led the organization’s Midwest Office for many years, spearheading advances in water quality, air quality, and public lands protection in the region. She was the first recipient of Sierra Club’s Michael McCloskey Award. Jane was also the founding director of the Biodiversity Project, a nationwide initiative to raise public awareness about the value of Earth’s diverse species, habitats, and ecosystems, and to promote responsive action to stem the tide of loss. During her years at Biodiversity Project, she was an active participant in the Wisconsin Academy’s landmark Leopold Legacy Conference and Waters of Wisconsin Conference. She also served as advisor to U.S. In the World, an initiative of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation to build a broad, bipartisan constituency for pragmatic, principled, effective, and cooperative U.S. global engagement, and has served as a lead writer-researcher for the Presidential Climate Action Plan. Jane holds a BA in Communications from Michigan State University, and a MS in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin.