Kelly Beevers
Northern Great Plains Rangelands Program Director
Kelly Beevers Kelly Beevers headshot. © © Paige Southwood
Areas of Expertise
Strategic Engagement, Collaborative Conservation
Biography
Kelly Beevers leads The Nature Conservancy’s North America Regenerative Grazing Lands strategy in the Northern Great Plains, a key component of the organization’s North America North America Agriculture program. In this role, she connects and coordinates work across TNC team members and key partners throughout multiple states and provinces. Providing resources, strategic direction, and support, Kelly’s work in this crucial landscape grounds and advances TNC’s foundational work with ranchers and other key contributors to restore and protect 240 million acres of intact North America grazing lands by 2030.
Before joining TNC in 2023, Kelly spent over six years amplifying and furthering the work of rancher-led and place-based collaborative conservation through her strategy consulting firm, Topos & Anthros. The experience she gained there and in previous career phases in commercial real estate development and private equity have provided meaningful ways to utilize distinct places to bring people together and collectively make change that ripples from the individual level to the community and to on the larger systems in which people and places intersect. It is this work steeped in genuine curiosity, active listening, valuing people’s perspectives and contributions, strategically identifying connections, creatively finding solutions, and bringing communities along through change, that has well prepared Kelly to support grazing lands coalitions, rancher-led collaborations, and diverse working lands working groups while knitting together TNC’s state-based work across a larger landscape.
Kelly holds a graduate degree in real estate finance from Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School and a dual undergraduate degree in finance and accounting also from Mays Business School. She has also completed the Gathering Fire facilitation training with Paicines Ranch Learning Center. Kelly is on the board of Women in Ranching.
Kelly grew up on a small cattle ranch in Central Texas where her father taught her the role of grazing to restore and manage the land. In 2015, Kelly moved to Montana and immediately began working more hands on with ranchers. Kelly still resides in Montana and can often be found working cows with neighbors, fly fishing in a cold trout stream, or hiking and camping with her dogs.
A Summer of Celebrating of Land Stewardship
November 16, 2023
The hum of conversation and laughter can be heard from 50 yards away, from the other side of the cattle guard, down at the far end of the line of trucks parked in a recently mowed hay field. Walking past the flatbed with the little red heeler obediently staying put, at least of half a dozen one-ton pickups every other one filled with a few eager border collies, fleet trucks emblazoned with logos of agencies - Fish and Game, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, Tacomas with the recognizable outdoor group logos of Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and Mule Deer Foundation, I followed the smell of fresh burger sizzling on the grill. Rounding the corner, over a hundred rancher neighbors and agency and non-profit partners spilled out of the meticulously cleaned out ranch shop. They gathered together to celebrate the honor bestowed on a friend, to acknowledge the hard work of private-land stewardship, and to connect on common values and shared hope.
Over the summer, I experienced this scene time and time again – always an impressively cleaned out shop, delicious burgers made with beef from the ranch, stunning prairie landscapes, and a shared appreciation for the hard-working people on the land who are demonstrating what is possible. From Glen Ullin, North Dakota, to Philip, South Dakota, to Pray, Montana, to Encampment, Wyoming, and on so many ranches in between, the verses of the conversation varied slightly to fit the context of the place while the chorus of our shared conservation ethic repeated. And in each place, the importance of having an open, curious mindset and a supportive peer network reverberated.
A rancher’s mindset provides the foundation to the intertwined success of a ranch ecologically and economically. Ranchers within each of the operations celebrated at the tours I attended this summer shared this mindset which allowed them to approach the interdependence and integration of the whole system in a regenerative way. From this place, these ranchers and many of their peers then seek out resources, change practices to work with nature instead of against it, and form a community of others who share their approach to continued learning and adapting. Peer networks consisting of people with shared values and complementary mindsets provide undeniable strength to ranchers and their agricultural operations. Collectively, the durable conservation achieved by these networks resounds across the Northern Great Plains.
As I submit my mileage report for my summer travel and dig out my window scraper, I find myself day dreaming about next summer, one I know will be filled with more home cooked meals eaten on the tailgates of mud and dust covered pickups, learning alongside people whose day jobs may look different than mine but with whom we at The Nature Conservancy share so many values, hopes, and goals.