Dr. Maria A. Whitehead is an ornithologist, professor, and conservation professional. She has worked for almost 20 years in land and water resource protection in the Southeast and the interdisciplinary realm of recreation access, climate adaptation and community resilience. Her varied career path has included positions as a bird research scientist in Hawaii, Australia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains but eventually led back to her roots as a land conservation specialist with The Nature Conservancy in rural South Carolina.
Today, as Senior Vice President and Director of Land for the Southeast at Open Space Institute (OSI), she guides the strategic direction of land conservation to realize OSI’s mission of protecting scenic, natural, and historic landscapes and making parks and other protected land more welcoming for all.
Raised in rural Back Swamp Community, SC, Dr. Whitehead’s job aligns with her personal mission to protect the places that also uplift the people in a region her family has called home for more than two centuries. She serves as the lead on varied conservation projects and initiatives including landscape-scale conservation projects and comprehensive community engagement strategies. In eight years at OSI she has assisted in the permanent protection of more than 75,000 acres of some of the most important and imperiled Southeast landscapes all of which will become accessible to the public as new parks, wildlife areas, or preserves.
In recent years, Dr. Whitehead has worked with South Carolina State Parks, community leaders, and conservation professionals to establish three new state parks in South Carolina, including the visionary Black River State Park, the first state park in the state in over 20 years. The state park will serve as an anchor to the Black River Initiative, a 70-mile-long riverine network of 12 local, state, and private parks united by a recreational water trail along the Black River between the towns of Kingstree and Georgetown. This collaborative effort, originally envisioned by Whitehead, aims to reconnect rural Williamsburg and Georgetown County residents to the State Scenic Black River, provide critical flood mitigation, and boost local tourism
These park projects seek a new paradigm for conservation in the Southeast. In addition to habitat and cultural resource protection, the parks focus on rural economic opportunity, improving access to nature-based recreation in underserved communities, and mitigating the impacts of climate change. These state parks have also provided a new template for how the conservation community can engage with tribal communities to secure important cultural resources, build trust, and collaborate meaningfully on management and access.
Whitehead also serves on the faculty of Clemson University’s Masters of Wildlife and Fisheries Program where she teaches courses in Landscape Ecology, Vertebrate Biology, and Land Protection.
Most importantly, Whitehead is mother to three daughters, ages 21, 14, and 7 and wife to a wonderful partner who shares her passion for conservation and recreation. The Whitehead/Olson family reside in Brevard, North Carolina, where they enjoy exploring, running, biking, boating and birding on the vast public lands surrounding the small mountain community.
Whitehead received her BA in Biology from Davidson College, her MS from University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, and her PhD from Clemson University’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation. In addition to her current faculty position at Clemson, she has taught as an adjunct professor at Furman University, The Citadel, and the College of Charleston.