About Grow Conservation
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About Ryan Szuch
I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in a rural community 30 miles northeast of the city. As a teenager, I was active in Scouts, various sports, and choral groups. I attended Susquehanna University in Snyder County, Pennsylvania for my Bachelor’s degree in a self-designed Ecosystems Analysis major. In my later college years and for a brief time after graduating, I worked at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center outside Annapolis, Maryland. I was then extremely fortunate to be awarded a Post-Graduate Fulbright Grant by the U.S. Department of State and spent a year studying natural resources and conducting stream research in New South Wales, Australia. Upon returning to the States, I earned a Master of Science in Soil Science at North Carolina State University. Later in my career, I added a Professional Certificate in Sustainable Business from Cornell University.
The first few jobs of my career were in environmental consulting, with national and multi-national consulting firms, working at their offices in New Jersey. I served both private industrial and public sector clients, consulting on a wide range of environmental services, such as land use permitting, ecological risk assessment, stream and wetland restoration, and natural resource damage assessment.
In the late 2000s, I transitioned my career to the public sector. I moved to the Harrisburg area and obtained an Affiliate position with the State Office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service. There, I audited conservation easement records and monitored farm, wetland, and grassland easement compliance. I then began my 12-year career with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources – Bureau of Forestry. I started in the Shale Gas Monitoring Team, where I created a water quality monitoring program to examine potential effects of shale gas development on state forest land. However, most of my time at the Bureau was in the Forest Resource Planning Section, including 8 years as its leader. The Planning Section is an interdisciplinary unit with responsibility for long-range planning, strategy development, land conservation, sustainability certification, and stakeholder and public engagement.
In 2023, I transitioned from the Bureau of Forestry back to the private sector by joining a stream and wetland restoration company that focused on mitigation banking. In January 2024, I set out to start my own business to serve the conservation community and founded Grow Conservation.
As for my personal life, I am married to a hilarious, caring, brave, and beautiful wife. Our home is on a suburban lot in northern York County where we live with our 4 dogs. There, we squeeze in a small vegetable garden, pawpaw trees, a rain garden, blueberry bushes, and as many perennial flowers as we can fit. My wife and I both volunteer as Trail Stewards for the York County Parks Department as well as assist with therapeutic horseback-riding lessons for special needs children at Leg Up Farm in York County. Our favorite hobbies are hiking, gardening, and sampling craft beers.
And Why Grow?
In addition to the environment, my other passion is for helping people. I had the privilege of supervising a small team at the PA Bureau of Forestry for 8 years. Team members came and went, but the principles of open dialogue, trust, and continuous improvement were constants. Well beyond any pride that I took in my own accomplishments, I felt much greater pride in the accomplishments of my team, both as a unit and as individuals. I thrived on doing my part to help people become the best versions of themselves.
As I went through my latest career transition, I considered that by setting a path of service to other organizations, I could help a greater number of fellow conservationists. I could deliver capacity to help them meet their goals, and I could help them to help themselves and unlock their fullest potential. The conservation community is one driven not by competition but rather by cooperation. I wish to be a networker, a facilitator, and a catalyst within the conservation community to help it grow its capacity to achieve great things for both “the resource” and for “the people.”
