Peter Howell

Peter is the Executive Director of the Conservation Finance Network, which seeks to advance land and resource conservation by expanding the use of innovative and effective funding and financing strategies.  He has 30 years of experience in the conservation field as a practitioner and funder.  As the Open Space Institute’s Executive Vice President for nearly two decades, he helped design, capitalize, and implement multiple land acquisition re-grant and loan funds that facilitated the conservation of 1.5 million acres of land from Maine to Georgia.  Previously, he was the inaugural program director for the environment at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, where he oversaw the distribution of almost $100 million for land conservation in the United States.  He also worked as a program officer at the Wallace Funds, designing and implementing an $18 million national initiative focused on creating and improving urban parks in 12 cities across the country.  A former award-winning newspaper reporter, he has worked in economic development field and in the communications industry.  He has a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and political philosophy from Wesleyan University where he was awarded Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.