Jacobs Creek Watershed Association director moving on

Five years ago, as she began her new position as Jacobs Creek Watershed Association executive director, Annie Quinn brought with her a “dream journal.”

“It was full of events like floats, bike rides, the (annual fundraising) Headwaters party,” she says. “I have checked off every single one of those dream journal ideas. Now is the time for the next big dreamer.”

Quinn is resigning her position, effective Oct. 14, to take a job closer to her family and home in Pittsburgh.

“It has been an honor to serve you and lead your organization for the last five years. … I leave this organization not because anything was wrong. I leave because it is the next step in my personal path,” Quinn says in her resignation letter to members.

“My kids are getting older. It’s very tricky for me to be an hour away. … I hear these little voices asking for help with homework and taking them to soccer practice,” she said in a phone interview.

Her new position will be as program manager for 3 Rivers Wet Weather, Quinn says.

During her tenure, Quinn cites as among her proudest accomplishments the annual “Crick Falls” clean-ups and implementation, through grant funding, of the Creek Connections program in the Mt. Pleasant Area and Southmoreland school districts.

She also has overseen such projects as pop-up paddling events at Greenlick Run Lake and the annual Headwaters fundraising parties.

The future

“The goal is to have an interim director, hopefully within the next few weeks. We have a lot of great staff right now,” she says.

Quinn says the association’s board has grown from four to eight. That growth, she says, has resulted in formation of committees and “allowed board members to hunker down and do what they enjoy.”

In the last 1 1/2 years, Quinn says, staff has grown from her position alone to include Denise Wilkins, who works on membership and manages the office, and the recently hired program coordinator Taylor Robbins and program manager Mary Kaufman.

Kaufman, she says, is the association’s 2018 Volunteer of the Year who, until her new position began, served as a board member.

Quinn is looking forward to what she says will be this month’s installation of a destination playground at Jacobs Creek Park@Greenlick Dam in Bullskin Township, Fayette County.

Her association began working with Fayette County officials to try to determine how the site could best serve the public.

“I got to be a part of that,” she says.

Quinn’s last event as director will be a tree-planting project at 3 p.m. Oct. 14 at Garfield Park in Scottdale. She plans to maintain her own association membership.

“I’m leaving on a high note,” she says.