Danna Smith

• Founder and Executive Director
• Dogwood Alliance

Danna Smith is the founder and Executive Director of Dogwood Alliance, a nonprofit that advances environmental justice and climate action through protecting Southern forests from destructive industrial logging. For over 25 years, she has been at the forefront of forest protection efforts, winning hard-hitting campaigns and negotiating ground-breaking forest protection commitments from some of the largest companies in the world.

In 2013, she played a lead role in launching an international campaign to stop the use of forests as a fuel replacement for coal. In 2017 she co-authored a report entitled The Great American Stand: US Forests and the Climate Emergency with Dr. Bill Moomaw – a lead author of five IPCC reports. She has been featured on CBS Morning News, CNN Headline News, NPR and in major news outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The New York Times.

She is an innovator in the forest protection movement, connecting the dots between climate change, forest destruction and environmental justice. She is relentless in pushing for forest protection in the US at a scale necessary to meet the challenges of the climate and biodiversity crises. She holds a law degree from Emory University.