Boom! Meet Melissa Hinten, our new executive director.

We’ve hired a fantastic—and first-ever—executive director to lead Trees Knoxville into a promising future. Please put your hands together for Melissa Hinten!

Melissa brings a wealth of knowledge and passion for environmental conservation to Trees Knoxville. She has served as teaching faculty and as the Sustainability Program Director in the Department of Geography & Sustainability at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oklahoma, where she studied land-use changes and their impact on the tallgrass prairie and oak-hickory forests of eastern Oklahoma.

Melissa brings new energy and vision to our mission of creating a thriving urban forest in Knoxville and Knox County. We can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together!