Waukesha County Land Conservancy

Cheryl White, PE, MS, MBA

Executive Director

In 2015, the Waukesha County Land Conservancy (WCLC) hired a full-time executive director, Cheryl White, to help lead the organization from an all-volunteer to a professionally staffed organization and ensure WCLC’s long-term sustainability. Ms. White has 30 years of leadership and management experience in both businesses and nonprofits. For the past 15 years, she has applied her business skills and knowledge to help nonprofits successfully achieve their missions. She was the development and operation director of the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and worked collaboratively to help protect more than 5,000 acres of property. She helped secure more than $20 million in grants and established a grant performance reporting system to measure, monitor, and improve project performance. Prior to entering the nonprofit sector, she worked for 15 years in program and project management roles for Johnson Controls, Inc. While at Johnson Controls, Ms. White led a multidisciplinary team and was a senior service product manager for mechanical and predictive services that generated more than $100 million per year. In addition, she was responsible for implementing a performance management program for the corporation that established, measured, monitored, and reported key performance indicators for contracts that totaled more than $200 million. She holds a BS in mechanical engineering, a MS in engineering mechanics, and an MBA. Ms. White is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Wisconsin.

Ms. White grew up on a dairy farm in southwestern Wisconsin near the Mississippi River, which she credits for building her strong work ethic. Her commitment to conservation was influenced by her father, who was named the Grant County Conservation Farmer of the Year and believed and often stated that he had a responsibility to leave the land in a better condition than he received it. Her hobbies include music, theater, art, and native plant gardening. She has more than 150 different native plant species on her and her husband’s one-acre property in the village of Slinger. Her passion is making organizations highly effective and developing and helping young people achieve their career dreams.