Director of Marketing

Jane Kirchner is the Director of the Marketing at American Farmland Trust (AFT). Her primary focus is the dissemination of information about AFT’s work via an integrated marketing program that includes the organization’s Web site and internet-based messaging. She also works with partner organizations and communities across the country to help build support for farm, ranch and forest land protection and develop land protection strategies. Prior to becoming Director of Marketing, she developed customized agriculture-related planning projects, workshops, economic studies and other consulting services for communities to address farm, ranch and forest land protection needs.

Kirchner has extensive hands-on experience dealing with development and land use issues in two of the country’s fastest growing counties. She served as vice chair of the Douglas County Planning Commission in Colorado and recently completed a four-year-term on the Loudoun County Planning Commission in Virginia. During her term in Loudoun County, she helped develop the Revised General Plan, the Revised 1993 Zoning Ordinance and other documents that drew national recognition for innovative growth management concepts and rural land protection.

Before joining AFT in 2003, Kirchner worked on a variety of land use and marketing initiatives, provided promotional marketing services for leading food industry companies and served as managing director for a firm providing U.S. food products and food distribution expertise to markets in Far Eastern Russia. She has a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and has completed postgraduate coursework in Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Alexandria, Virginia.