Lindsay Keeney has served as the Conservation Director for the Illinois Environmental Council since 2017, where she serves as lead staff on IEC’s conservation, open space, and river issues. In addition, she supports IEC’s sustainable agriculture and local food programming. Lindsay believes that getting our decision-makers out of their offices and into the field where they can see environmental issues and initiatives firsthand and build relationships with their constituents in the conservation and agriculture community is the key to passing public policy that makes Illinois a leader. The work she is most proud of is building IEC’s tour program and connecting legislators to environmental issues across the state.
At IEC, Lindsay leads the Illinois is Beautiful Coalition, which works to ensure Illinois contributes to the national 30×30 goal in an equitable, community-based, and impactful manner, and the Wetlands Coalition, which aims to reinstate wetlands protections at the state level after devastating federal rollbacks. Lindsay has also served as a Vital Lands Network Architect and on various agency committees, including the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Illinois 30×30 Task Force and the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchasing Cooperative Agreement Planning Committee. She is currently a member of the Lieutenant Governor’s Rivers of Illinois Coordinating Council, the board of the Old Capitol Farmers Market, and the Prairie State Conservation Coalition Board. In addition, she chairs the Prairie State Conservation Coalition’s Policy Committee.
Lindsay has served in various conservation roles throughout her career, including positions with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Jim Edgar State Fish and Wildlife Area, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Illinois Natural History Survey’s Illinois River Biological Station, Illinois Organic Growers Association, and the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. Lindsay is trained in controlled prairie burns and is a certified farmers market manager.
Lindsay holds a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Illinois at Springfield and a master’s certificate in Geographic Information Services. In her spare time, she can be found restoring her farmhouse in rural Ashland, Illinois, chasing her kiddos Oliver, Hazel, and Lucas, hiking, fishing, kayaking, and Instagramming pictures of her kids and dogs.