Cortney joined ADK as executive director in 2025, charged with leading the organization through its continued modernization and unparalleled program delivery in the Adirondacks and throughout New York State. Cortney has two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, turnaround strategy, fundraising, campaign strategy, conflict resolution, communications, large landscape planning, advocacy, and conservation; climate change and climate resilience policy, grassroots advocacy campaigns, community outreach, storm water and watershed protection, fundraising, and public participation processes.
Cortney led the Waterfront Alliance through two periods of growth, first as COO and next as President and CEO, twice doubling the size of the organization, professionalizing operations and fundraising, and securing national and local policy and legislative victories.
While at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), she designed, crafted, and led campaign strategy and political strategy for the designation of Stonewall National Monument by President Obama in 2016. Cortney crafted NPCA’s Northeast execution of the campaign to reduce the $12B maintenance backlog affecting national parks—one of the nationally executed campaigns that led to the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act in 2020. In addition, she led the reworking of NPCA’s overall land use and watershed protection strategy for the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreation River in 2020.
Cortney was the original architect of the design and launch of the Waterfront Alliance’s award-winning, national design standard for waterfronts, the WEDG® (Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines) program. Her advocacy strategy for New York City Five-Borough ferry service led to adoption of the plan by New York City Mayor de Blasio in 2014, which resulted in New York City’s commitment to its first new ferry services in decades, continuing to this day as NYC Ferry.
In 2023 and 2024, Cortney designed and secured funding for state and city climate resilience programs, and comprehensive strategies for two major landscapes in New York City including Flushing Corona Meadows Park, Queens, NY, home of the Mets.
She served as a member of the New York City Bureau of Coastal Resilience Expert Advisory Group, the New York City Sustainability Advisory Board, and serves as a member of the Hudson Canyon National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. Cortney was a leadership advisor to The Climate Exchange at Governors Island.
Early in her career, Cortney worked in engineering consulting, specializing in state and federal stormwater regulations for the trucking and railroad industries and for municipalities in the state of Georgia. She served as a consultant to the State of Delaware to develop protections for one of its most rapidly developing yet ecologically intact watersheds.
Cortney enjoys time with her beloved children, husband, and family across the country. During her free time, and as an outlet for her own anxiety about climate change, she works on the challenges that climate change and ecological anxiety pose to young people and our visions for the future. She works directly with people experiencing distress and anxiety due to career changes, leadership roles, and anxiety as an intern on the weekends.
Cortney has a bachelor’s degree in environmental policy from Mount Holyoke College, a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University, and is taking classes in therapy at Syracuse University specializing in anxiety, adolescents, and women in leadership.