Since 1990, Donna Daniels has served in a variety of roles at Brushy Fork, including four previous years as director from 2012 to 2016. She returned to direct the program in 2018, after spending a couple of years working as principal planner for Department of Housing and Urban Development programs focusing on affordable housing, community infrastructure, and homelessness in Clark County/Las Vegas, Nevada. Donna has also served as director of learning resources for Communities by Choice, an affiliate program of the Mountain Association in Berea, where she managed resource development for an online platform for communities practicing sustainable development. Her skills include workshop and curriculum design, meeting facilitation, strategic planning, communications, fundraising and proposal writing, grant management, research and reporting, and program administration. Most recently at Brushy Fork, she has led a strategic process to revive and renew Brushy Fork’s core leadership development work in central Appalachian communities. In addition to core leadership development work, she provides a variety of services to contractual clients for Brushy Fork.

Donna is a first generation college graduate with a BA in English (1989) from Berea College. She was born and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee, where her father’s family has lived since the late 1700s. She raised her children in Estill County, Kentucky, before sojourning to the Desert Southwest for a couple of years. She now lives in Berea with her husband Gene, two spoiled pups, Jack and Joplin, and a frisky feline named Dobby.