Suzanne Case was appointed Chairperson of the Department of Land and Natural Resources in 2015. She is a 28-year veteran of The Nature Conservancy, having served as the Hawaiʻi Program’s Executive Director from 2001 to 2015. Her responsibilities included overseeing eight Hawaiʻi Nature Conservancy preserves, the creation of new National Wildlife Refuges on the slopes of Mauna Kea, and networks of local communities working to restore near-shore marine resources. She graduated from Punahou School, earned her BA from Stanford University and her JD from Hastings College of the Law, University of California, San Francisco.