By Cara Lewis, Senior Communications Manager
Attorney, conservationist, and former TLC board chair, Mavis Gragg was presented with the distinguished Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award at the 2024 Land Trust Alliance national land conservation conference held in Providence, Rhode Island.
Named for the conservationist who inspired the Alliance’s founding in 1982, the award ranks among the organization’s highest honors and honors those who have enriched the conservation community through their outstanding leadership, innovation, and creativity in land conservation. Kingsbury Browne was a conservationist who inspired the Alliance’s founding in 1982. Today, the award ranks among the organization’s highest honors.
The recipient embodies the values that characterized Kingsbury Browne and led to his own impact on the land trust movement, especially:
- Innovation: Working to improve the practice of land protection through new approaches, creative initiative and uncommon vision
- Collaboration: An active and effective collaborator with other land trusts, community groups and diverse interest groups, unusual alliances, etc. and explore partnering to leverage their potential
- Generous Spirit: Sharing ideas, experiences and knowledge with others to nurture and mentor the next generation of conservationists and leaders
Creating space for conservationists of color
Gragg is co-founder of HeirShares, an organization that delivers comprehensive educational content, data and technology to empower heirs’ property landowners and attorneys dealing with heirs’ property issues, as well as a founding member of the Conservationists of Color, an affinity group creating space for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement to connect. A member of the Land Trust Alliance’s Conservation Defense Advisory Council, she serves on its Common Ground Advisory Council, which laid the groundwork for the Alliance’s community-centered conservation program.
Dedicated to understanding death and dirt
A self-described “death and dirt” attorney, Mavis grew up in Black Mountain, North Carolina and was interested in becoming a lawyer since she was 6 years old. By sixth grade, she was corresponding with the admissions office at the University of North Carolina’s School of Law where she went on to complete her undergraduate studies. After a successful run as a corporate attorney in Washington D.C., Mavis returned to NC and created her own law firm focusing on estate planning and heirs’ property.
Appointed to the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Authority in 2019 and later as Chair by Governor Roy Cooper, she worked with the state board on allocating funds for state parks capital projects and land acquisition and to local governments for parks, public beach access, and improvements in state parks.
Preserving land and empowering new landowners in the Triangle
Mavis joined TLC’s Board of Directors in 2016 and was involved in the opening of both the George and Julia Brumley Family Nature Preserve in Orange County and the Bailey and Sarah Williamson Preserve in Wake County. Mavis helped develop TLC’s 2018 Strategic Action Plan to double the pace of conservation while also increasing TLC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. She led the organization through the global pandemic and served on the Good Ground advisory committee to help TLC develop the Good Ground Initiative program, a model for land trusts across the country that uses conservation tools to increase land ownership for historically underserved land seekers. Passionate about education and art, Mavis and her sister founded Black Women Drone and the Gragg Family Fund, which supports minority students in attending college and traveling abroad. She also serves on the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation Board and is co-founder of Pop Box Gallery. Mavis just returned to Durham after a year participating in the Loeb Fellowship Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
About the Kingsbury Browne Award
Presented annually at the national conference for land trusts, the Kingsbury Browne Award honors those who have enriched the conservation community through their outstanding leadership, innovation, and creativity in land conservation. Gragg will serve as the Kingsbury Browne distinguished practitioner for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., for 2024-2025.
