Conservation Partners, LLC

Taylor Cole, President

tcole@conservationpartnersllc.com

Taylor Cole was raised in Lexington and Rockbridge County, Virginia. His professional background is in retail and commercial banking where he served as a senior manager with some of the state’s most successful commercial and community banks. The underwriting experience Taylor gained as a senior credit officer is particularly applicable to helping establish a viable market for Virginia’s land preservation tax credits.

Taylor has been a board member and officer of many charities, economic development organizations, and conservations groups. He received his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Duke University in 1984.

Taylor currently lives on his farm in Augusta County where he incorporates extensive conservation and wildlife management practices into his farming activities. In 2002, he received the Conservationist of the Year award from the Headwaters Soil and Water Conservation District. He is most proud of his efforts to restore and protect the 1.5 miles of Calfpasture River that run through his farm. This important section of the river is now protected by a particularly restrictive conservation easement Taylor placed on the farm in 2004.

James A. McLaughlin, Policy Director

jmclaughlin@conservationpartnersllc.com

Jim McLaughlin is a native of Virginia who has been consulting and practicing law in the private land conservation area for 11 years, assisting landowners with the donation, sale, and bargain sale of conservation easements. Jim has significant expertise in land conservation, real estate, and tax law and has extensively researched the public policy of land conservation and the valuation of conservation easements.

Jim completed his undergraduate work at Washington and Lee University and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1990. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Utah State Bar. Jim also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He is the coauthor, with James H. Boykin, Ph.D., of “Addressing Enhancement in Conservation Easement Appraisals,” which appeared in The Appraisal Journal,Volume LXXIV, Number 3: Summer 2006. The publication won the Armstrong/Kahn Award for most outstanding article published in the journal in 2006.

Since 1993, Jim has helped his family protect almost 1,500 acres of land on and adjacent to Jump Mountain in Rockbridge County with donated conservation easements. Jim currently resides in Salt Lake City, Utah and spends part of each year in Virginia.

Kelli Hopkins, Program Administrator/Vice President

khopkins@conservationpartnersllc.com

Kelli has worked in the legal field since 1980 and has served as a paralegal and administrator for 3 major law firms in Nevada. Since joining Conservation Partners, Kelli has become an avid conservationist. Kelli demonstrates a flair for organization and processing and has managed the creation and design of a comprehensive database that has served all facets of the business. Her commitment and professionalism have been instrumental in establishing Conservation Partners’s reputation as a premier consultant for landowners, easement holders, and conservation professionals. Kelli was promoted from Program Administrator to Vice President in 2007, and her duties include managing support staff, working directly with the Policy Director, Jim McLaughlin, and serving as office manger, bookkeeper, and Program Administrator.

Kelli graduated from Clark County Community College with an A.A. in Business Management and is currently working on her B.S. in biology.

Claibourne Brown, Director of Easement Development, and Director of Marketing

cbrown@conservationpartnersllc.com

Claibourne worked for Conservation Partners as an intern in 2004 and 2005 before graduating from Meredith College in 2006 with a B.S. in Business Administration and a concentration in marketing. She came on-board full time in June of 2006 as the marketing director and an Easement Specialist. In August, 2007, Claibourne was promoted to Director of Easement Development, and she continues to serve as marketing director.

In a short period of time, Claibourne has overseen the redesign of the company’s website, helped with the design and distribution of Conservation Partners’s DVD Your Land Legacy, An introduction to Conservation Easements in Virginia, and assisted with the design and production of various marketing materials and brochures.

As part of her expanding duties as Director of Easement Development, Claibourne is responsible for the creation and implementation of easement summary packages for prospective easement holders and for ramping up the company’s competencies in mapping and graphics. She has attended and completed an ESRI course and is well on her way to mastering GIS systems as part of the company’s project to coordinate its technology with that of various easement holders and other conservation professionals. Claibourne also assists in the preparation of materials for tax credit registration.

William H. Funk, III, Easement Specialist

wfunk@conservationpartnersllc.com

A native of southern Kentucky, Bill received a BA from Centre College and a Master’s degree and JD from Vermont Law School. The former Executive Director of the Valley Conservation Council, Bill has performed extensive environmental policy work for federal and state governments and for nonprofit organizations including Earthjustice and The Nature Conservancy. A member of the Virginia State Bar, Bill lives in Staunton.

Cornelia Christian, Easement Specialist

cchristian@conservationpartnersllc.com

Cornelia graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with a B.A. in Political Science. She returned to Virginia after college and worked for ten years in the banking industry before taking time out to spend some time with her two sons. She later returned to work teaching middle school social studies in central Virginia. In 2002, Cornelia joined the board of the newly established Central Virginia Land Conservancy and developed a passion for preserving the Virginia countryside. Land conservation officially became her vocation when she came to work for Conservation Partners in 2004 as the company’s first Easement Specialist.

David Hurt, Easement Specialist

dhurt@conservationpartnersllc.com

David Hurt was raised with a strong land conservation ethic on his family’s Virginia Century Farm in Franklin County. That land – and the nearby land where David and his wife Katrina now raise their children – is protected by a conservation easement.

With an English degree from Roanoke College, David sold Bluegrass instruments and taught middle-school English before spending six years as project manager at Western Virginia Land Trust, where he met with landowners to discuss conservation easements, led fundraising and grant writing efforts, developed outreach and education materials, and worked with many natural resource agency and non-profit partners.

David also serves on the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, where he has led such successful initiatives as the Franklin County Trails and Blueways Plan and a Purchase of Development Rights ordinance.

With the personal perspectives of a landowner, elected official, and conservation professional, David works as a Conservation Partners easement specialist to assist landowners throughout the entire conservation easement process.

Alisande Tombarge, Easement Development Specialist

atombarge@conservationpartnersllc.com

Alisande Tombarge holds a Bachelor of Science degree from George Mason University in geography, with a concentration in Geographic Information Systems. She came to Conservation Partners following a five-month internship in Lander, Wyoming working for the Bureau of Land Management as a GIS technician assisting the office’s GIS specialist. While working for the BLM she created maps for customers and fellow employees and created and edited data for the field office’s Resource Management Plan maps. As an Easement Development Specialist, Alisande is uses her GIS expertise to illustrate various maps for easement summary packages and for Baseline Documentation Reports. She also assists in the assembly and distribution of Baseline Documentation Reports. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, keeping up with the cinema world and spending time with her dog.

Linda J. McKinnis, Compliance Director

lmckinnis@conservationpartnersllc.com

Linda McKinnis recently moved to Lexington from western North Carolina.  A native of Louisiana, she received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her law degree from Louisiana State University in 1987.  She is an inactive member of the Louisiana State Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas.  Linda has practiced law in the fields of commercial litigation, banking, collections, securities regulation, and litigation arising from failed financial institutions.  She has served as a Senior Attorney with the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and with the FDIC Legal Division in its Baton Rouge, Atlanta and Dallas offices.  Most recently, she served as Regional Attorney for CT Corporation in its Dallas office where she wrote and presented nation wide legal information seminars on topics of interest to those advising corporations and other business entities including business entity choice, formation, compliance, and mergers and acquisitions.  As our Compliance Director, Linda will be assisting Jim McLaughlin with Quality Standards reviews and analysis of tax credit documentation, and she will work directly with our customers’ attorneys, appraisers, accountants, and other professional advisors on the preparation of materials for tax credit registration.