Our Trustees are volunteers with a breadth of experience who share a passion and dedication to preserving land.
Executive Committee
Dan Guss, President
Dan is a retired Environmental Engineer. His work was studying, designing and installing water treatment systems. He is interested in supporting organizations that help to improve our natural and man-made environment. Dan has been married to his wife Gail Addison Guss for 54 years and they have three grown children. He grew up in the State College area, graduated from State College High, is an engineering graduate of Penn State, and holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts. Dan is proud to be the son of a Penn State Extension Veterinarian and grandson of a Central PA Dairy farmer. He has a passion for clean water and believes that the vital foundation of clean water and a clean environment is stewardship of the land.
Nancy VanLandingham, Vice President
Nancy VanLandingham moved to Centre County in 1977 to attend grad school at Penn State and earned her Master’s and most of her PhD (All But Dissertation) in Geography. She wrote her thesis on property rights and land use law and worked in private consulting for counties and municipalities in the field of economic development.
She and her husband bought an 1840s farmhouse with 10 acres of land in Halfmoon Township and raised our children Sarah and David there. In 1998, she began helping a friend in her real estate business and that has developed into a 25-year career (so far!) at RE/MAX Centre Realty.
Nancy served on the Halfmoon Township Planning Commission for six years and is very interested in the development pressures rural communities face. Boards and municipalities can’t halt development if the market forces are there, but they can channel and control it for the greater public good.
Two of the best things about Centre County are the vibrancy of a college town and the authenticity and beauty of the surrounding rural landscape. Nancy believes in doing what we can to preserve and enhance both.
Myra Sletson, Treasurer
A native of New York City, Myra Sletson attended college at SUNY Binghamton, and did graduate work at Columbia University, achieving both an M.A. and M.Phil in American History. Myra taught and lectured at a number of institutions including: Columbia University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Empire State College, New York University (the Real Estate Institute), and The School of Visual Arts.
Myra left academia in 1986, beginning her career in banking and finance with the Chase Manhattan Bank specializing in commercial real estate valuation work and consulting assignments for the bank’s Manhattan real estate portfolio. After relocating to Pennsylvania in 1997, Myra worked at various economic development and financial institutions in Central Pennsylvania for over 25 years, acquiring diverse experience in real estate valuation; commercial lending and credit underwriting; commercial loan operations; economic development finance; loan documentation; venture capital investment; and small business lending. Myra joined Northwest Bank in 2007 as a commercial lender, advancing to a position as the bank’s senior credit pen for its four-state commercial real estate business.
Myra has served on numerous boards of directors for various organizations and non-profits, including: Foxdale Village; the Mid-Central Chapter of the American Red Cross; the League of Women Voters (Lewisburg) and RMA (Central PA Chapter). She currently serves as the Secretary for the Livonia Cemetery Association. Myra retired in 2021 and resides with her husband, Andrew Macneal on their family farm: Macneal Orchards & Sugarbush, in Livonia, Pa.
Linda Friend, Secretary
Linda was a librarian, department head and open access publisher for Penn State Libraries before retiring and has been a landowner in Penns Valley for over 40 years. Linda is also a board member and shift leader for Centre County PAWS, as well as a board member and past co-president of AAUW State College. She has farming experience with sheep and beef cattle and is committed to conservation best practices and to farmland and water resources preservation.
Trustees
Franklin Egan
Franklin Egan is a soil scientist and climate strategist. Franklin, a Boalsburg resident, worked with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture for several years before co-founding RegenAll, a non-profit to help local businesses and governments work through climate action planning.
Franklin has worked with the Centre Region Council of Governments on a local climate action plan for State College and the surrounding communities. Energized by that process, he was eager to serve on the CCFT Board of Trustees. Farmland preservation is an enormous lever from the perspective of local climate planning, he says.
“Well-managed farmland can sequester carbon dioxide in healthy soils and can also help landscapes be more resilient in the face of the extreme temperatures and precipitation that climate change will bring to our region,” says Franklin.
“By constraining suburban sprawl, preserved farmland can push communities to make better choices about housing and transportation. Over time, encouraging smaller, more dense homes and shorter commutes and daily travel will have an enormous effect on greenhouse gas pollution and climate change.”
Larry Hutchinson
Larry is a retired professor of Veterinary Science at Penn State University. Penn State and Cornell provided the educational background for a career as a practicing large animal veterinarian and later as an extension educator at PSU. He has a long-standing interest and concern about agriculture and the environment. Larry loves the outdoors and enjoys hiking, canoeing and horseback riding.
Beth Kelly
Beth has been a resident of Centre County for 18 years after growing up in Somerset County. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. Beth has spent her career in banking, most recently as a commercial real estate underwriter. She is President of the local chapter of the Risk Management Association, a nonprofit organization that provides education for financial professionals. She resides in Boalsburg with her family.
David Litke
David Litke, helicopter pilot and owner of Polarblast sand-blasting company, donated a conservation easement on 55 acres of farmland off Blanchard Street in Bellefonte. Litke served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam as an air evacuation medic. He built his own helicopter from a kit and obtained his pilot’s license. He is concerned about farmers having access to land suitable for farming and wants to see his fields continued to be farmed, rather than be developed into houses or apartment buildings.
Bob Potter
Bob Potter is a 50-year resident of Centre County and a 40- year resident of Boalsburg. Following a career in public relations he served as Executive Director of the Centre County Community Foundation. Along the way Bob has been involved in many community organizations, including serving as president of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, chair of the Centre County United Way campaign, and President of the Boalsburg Village Conservancy. For his community service Bob was named PSU Renaissance Person for 2005.
Catherine Smith
Catherine Smith and co-owner John Smith call their old farm ChicoryLane. Settled in 1775 and protected since 2017 by a conservation easement, the property is managed as an ecological reserve (chicorylane.com). Catherine appreciates the history and beauty of central Pennsylvania’s ridge and valley region. She supports land preservation as stewardship committee chair of the Centre County Farmland Trust and is active in conservation as a director of the ChicoryLane Foundation. Before retiring, Catherine taught English literature and writing at Bucknell, Syracuse, and East Carolina universities.
Martha Grout Taylor ~
Liaison to the Farmland Preservation Artists of Central Pennsylvania
Martha is a member of the Farmland Preservation Artists of Central Pennsylvania, a group that partners with the Centre County Farmland Trust, and is a liaison between the two organizations. She grew up in the State College area and is a graduate of State College High and Penn State, with a B.S. in Biology. She is retired from laboratory work in toxicology. Martha’s father was a Penn State Extension Agricultural Engineer, and both sets of grandparents were farmers. She values both the aesthetic and the economic value of farmland to our community.