A year after her unsuccessful bid for Congress, former Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz has accepted a job as the president and CEO of a forest conservation nonprofit.
American Forests, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, announced Franz’s hiring last week. She confirmed Friday that she has no plans to run for higher office.
“My focus now is on American Forests and working with our amazing team to achieve the audacious goals we have of conserving and restoring America’s forests,” Franz said in an email.
Franz will start her new role on Sept. 30. Washington state will still be her home base, she said, though she will be traveling frequently to Washington D.C. and other American Forests sites around the country.
Franz served as Washington’s commissioner of public lands from January 2017 to January 2025. In 2023, she began to run for governor, then dropped out of that race and vied unsuccessfully last year for an open U.S. House seat in western Washington’s 6th Congressional District.
After then-president and CEO of American Forests, Jad Daley, announced in May that he would step down on Sept. 30 at the end of his term, the search team hired by American Forests reached out to Franz and encouraged her to apply for the position.
American Forests is based in Washington, D.C. The group’s mission of driving forest conservation and restoration, climate change mitigation and community resilience matches the values that guided Franz’s public service, she said.
“For me, it’s about carrying forward the fight for healthy forests and healthy communities, but with a bigger canvas and more tools to create lasting impact,” Franz said.
Working at a nonprofit like American Forests, Franz said, allows her to focus on mobilizing government agencies at the local, state and federal level, along with corporate partners and communities nationwide to accelerate forest conservation and restoration.
“Like Washington state, as a country, we are at a moment of inflection where we must decide if we are going to save our forests or let them disappear,” she said.
American Forests cited Franz’s work as public lands commissioner, including the development of several state programs related to wildfire response and forest resiliency, as reasons why she was selected to lead the organization.
“She’s a collaborator and a team builder, and there’s no one who works harder, smarter or with more passion in driving change and progress,” Daley said of Franz.
Franz was the recipient of the organization’s first Forest Resilience Champion Award in 2019 for work on the state’s 20-year Forest Health Strategic Plan, and partnered with American Forests as public land commissioner to launch the Washington Tree Equity Collaborative in 2023.
In July, a former Department of Natural Resources employee sued Franz and the agency, arguing that Franz mishandled abuse allegations that the employee made against the department’s former top lawyer. Franz has denied those allegations.
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