Meet Joan Maloof

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joan Maloof. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joan below.

Joan, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Joan (Lukas) Maloof was born with an affinity for plants. She was fascinated by them and wanted to learn more about them. She majored in Plant Science at the University of Delaware and graduated with Distinction and Honors. In 1978 she was awarded the Dr. John W. Heuberger Award (for most promising student). She went on to study plants in the wetlands for her MS and a rare plant that grows in the sub-alpine region of Colorado for her PhD. Maloof eventually started teaching others. She was awarded tenure at Salisbury University in Maryland, and is now a professor emerita there.

Besides her distinguished educational career, Maloof has been active in public service. She is the founder and past-director of the Old-Growth Forest Network, a successful national organization. She was editor of The Maryland Naturalist journal from 2009-2013. She served on the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, as an ecologist, for the Chesapeake and Pocomoke State Forest Lands 2005-2015. She was Wicomico County Champion Tree coordinator 2006-2011, on the Salisbury Mayor’s Environmental Policy Task Force, in 2008, and on the Executive Committee of Wicomico Environmental Trust, 2004-2008. Maloof was also the founder of the Environmental Studies major at Salisbury University, and the co-founder and director of the Center for Conflict Resolution at Salisbury University.
All of these efforts came together to reveal her purpose of saving forests.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Joan Maloof is the most important forest preservation activist alive in the United States today. She is the author of numerous books about forests. Her books, “Teaching the Trees,” and “Among the Ancients” helped to inform author Richard Powers in the writing of his award-winning novel, “The Overstory.” In part, he based his character Patricia Westerford on Dr. Maloof. Powers is also a supporter of the Old-Growth Forest Network, an organization that Maloof founded in 2012. Maloof’s most science-based book is “Nature’s Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests.” This book, and her book “Treepedia” were published by Princeton University Press.

Maloof travels widely to give invited lectures. After she gave the Lillian Stone Distinguished Lecture, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, one faculty member remarked that Maloof should be awarded a MacArthur Genius award.because Maloof doesn’t just write and lecture, she also DOES. Joan Maloof has saved many forests with her networking skills and persistence, especially in her home state of Maryland.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Education
Persistence
Kindness

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

In founding, and running, a nonprofit organization our most important partners are those who have contributed financial wealth to further our mission. The more funds that are contributed, the more staff we can add, and support fairly, so that more forests can be preserved and added to the Old-Growth Forest Network. This Network of forests will benefit numerous plants and animals and generations of human beings. These ancient forests are places where the earth can just be — the Earth. We know that there are many people who feel this empathy toward the earth, however some have the financial means to help, but no time or inclination to be active. Others desire to work directly for the earth, but don’t have the means to support themselves while they do so. These two groups of people need each other so we try to being them together. Those of wealth looking to do good with it need our organization as much as we need them.

I urge anyone who wants to connect with us to first spend some time on our website looking at all the things we do: www.OldGrowthForest.net after that please email us: [email protected]. Let’s grow together!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Jamie Phillips, Susan Ives, Rick Maloof

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