North Coast Land Conservancy’s development team has expanded to include a development coordinator, a role that came to fruition with the hiring of Caroline Haslach.
Caroline, who was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, served in a temporary contracted position to support NCLC’s fundraising and development efforts in November 2024 to February 2025. She then stepped into the newly added permanent position of Development Coordinator on May 12.
Caroline describes herself as a sixth-generation Oregonian. Her grandparents frequently visited the Oregon Coast—and Gearhart, in particular—and that tradition was passed down to her family. Throughout her upbringing in Portland, they would spend their summers in the small seaside village. Her first Fourth of July was celebrated at the parade in Gearhart, and she remembers long, leisurely days of riding her horse on the beach, walking to get ice cream downtown, and developing a love for the coast.
After high school, she attended Belmont University in Tennessee, graduating in 2016 with a bachelor of arts degree in English. Her plan at the time was to work in the entertainment industry and—after a short stint back in Portland—she moved to Los Angeles in 2017. Between the two locations, she gained diverse experiences, working as a set production assistant for the television series Grimm; tour planning for a well-known band; and doing a variety of other freelancing jobs. She joined Hulu’s social media team from 2019 through 2021.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Caroline returned to the northern Oregon Coast. After her time with Hulu, she continued working in various support, IT, and customer service positions.
“I enjoy technology and understanding how it works,” she says.
That was her gateway to volunteering with NCLC. Although she remembers attending an event with founding executive director Neal Maine at Little Beach, in Gearhart, when she was in fifth grade, it wasn’t until last summer that she became reacquainted with the organization.
In October, she started volunteering, with a focus on database support. When the fulltime Development Coordinator position opened, offering opportunities to manage data and also plan and execute events, she saw it as a perfect fit.
“I love the technology side of things, and I’m also an extrovert and I like being around people,” she says. “This is the perfect merge of my two halves. I can do the nitty-gritty tech side and also be in the community and interface with people who have a common interest in conservation.”
“[The natural world] is so pretty, and the need is so strong to preserve it for future generations.”
Over the next few months, and years, she looks forward to meeting more people in the community and individuals who are involved in NCLC’s work.
She also has a strong passion for the natural world, one that was fomenting even in her childhood. She recalls a poem she wrote in sixth-grade from the perspective of Mother Earth, calling out the harm being done to the natural environment through negative human activities, and she sees common threads from her youth to her current trajectory.
Not only did she spend summers at the beach, but she also grew up around farm animals and was outside a majority of the time. Like other Oregon students, she had the opportunity to attend Outdoor School, an immersive outdoor education experience for fifth- and sixth-graders. These experiences stirred up a lasting appreciation for nature.
“It’s so pretty, and the need is so strong to preserve it for future generations,” she says.
Outside of work, Caroline has a variety of hobbies and interests, and she sees herself as a “lifelong learner.” She enjoys boogie boarding (and she plans to learn how to surf this summer), reading, baking, spending time with her dog Ringo and cat Lulu, and learning more than a half-dozen new languages.
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