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Suzanne Case

Summary of Work

Under Governor David Ige, Suzanne Case served as the Hawaii Chairperson of Land and Natural Resources from April 24, 2015 until leaving office on December 31, 2022. Prior to her work in office, Case was part of the counsel for The Nature Conservancy from 1987 to 2001 before finally becoming its Executive Director from 2001 to 2015. The Nature Conservancy is a non-profit Environmental Program focusing on promoting environmental conservation and sustainability. During her time at the conservancy, Case would go on to manage the creation of a National Wildlife Refuge on Mauna Kea and supervise eight Nature Conservancy Preserves.

Education

Case went to high school and graduated from Punahou School in 1974, then attended Williams College in Massachusetts before going to Stanford University where she graduated with honors in 1979, obtaining her BA in History^[1]. Following Stanford, Case received her JD from the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco where she was also apart of the Hastings Law Journal (1983).

Hawaii Chairperson of Land and Natural Resources

Appointed to the position by Governor David Ige, Case served as chairperson from April 2015 to December 2022^[2]. Those in the position of chairperson head the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources which is a seven person state body that is responsible for the important task of conserving as well as managing the natural resources of Hawaii. As the chairperson, Case was the board's executive, responsible for directly managing the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and by extension responsible for implementing the board's policies that everyone needed to follow.