When Meg Cuming stepped up to join the Nature Trust Board of Directors in 2022, it was a perfect match for her love of the outdoors and her deep commitment to service through volunteer board governance.

Meg grew up in Ontario and spent her summers doing “nature-based summer recreation” on Lake Temagami and in Algonquin Provincial Park. She came to Nova Scotia to pursue an outdoor recreation degree at Acadia University; her undergraduate thesis focused on sustainable resource management in the forestry space. She went on to law school at Dalhousie; “I thought, as many do, that I would be an environmental lawyer,” Meg explains. Although she completed a marine and environmental law certificate as part of her degree, she ended up moving to the Annapolis Valley to work in a small law firm.

Meg first heard about the Nature Trust while she was a first-year associate at the firm, around 2008. “I have this distinct memory of seeing a job posting for the Nova Scotia Nature Trust and thinking that it would be so cool to be able to combine my legal training with an organization working to protect land in perpetuity,” she says. Although she wasn’t able to leave her position for the nonprofit sector at that time, she did later stop practicing law to move back into the recreation world. She worked as a municipal recreation director and ultimately landed in the Nova Scotia government, where she currently works as a Director in the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism, and Heritage.

Being part of a Board has long been how Meg has supported her community. “That’s part of my ethos,” she says. She sees serving on volunteer boards as a way to offer her skills in governance and organizational leadership to support local organizations. “Using my privilege in that way has been something that was modelled to me from a young age, by my family and through school programs,” she continues. She has served as President of Recreation Nova Scotia, and on the board of L’Arche Homefires (a community for individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities living in a community). She has also volunteered some time to support the Nova Scotia Sea School in their risk management planning.

At the same moment that Meg was contemplating what her new board role could be, the Nature Trust was recruiting new board members from outside of HRM. When a representative reached out to ask to meet with her about the possibility, “I felt like it was serendipitous.” She had been wanting to work with an organization with a provincial rather than municipal scope, and she says, “it was just a perfect match for where I was.” Soon after, the chair’s seat became vacant, and Meg was happy to be able to offer her skills, expertise, and capacity to step into the role. “We have a cohesive and experienced board, and it was so easy to say yes because of how heavily supported I am by the staff team.”

“In Nova Scotia, so much of our culture is driven by the nonprofit sector,” Meg explains. “There’s a lot of need for volunteers to support that, but for me it feels like a two-way street. I get to learn about a new organization, meet new people, and use my experience in a different way. There was a time in my life where I was more immersed in environmental science and outdoor recreation, so this is a way to stay connected to that but recognize that my experience is more useful at the board level than, say, as a property guardian. One of the cool things about the Nature Trust is that there are so many different ways to get involved.”

All of our volunteer Board members help to articulate and support the Nature Trust’s strategic direction, and to act as Nature Trust ambassadors in different spaces than our staff and volunteers might generally be working. As Chair, Meg sees her job as being “to maintain and sustain the ambitious growth and positive impact that the organization is having. And we feel really equipped to do that because of the strong donor base, the amazing volunteers, and the exceptional staff – the board is just one part of that organizational ecosystem.”

Meg is looking forward to meeting more of the Nature Trust community at our upcoming Inspired by Nature 30th anniversary gala. “It’s a great opportunity to bring people together to celebrate the work and the future. The Nature Trust has grown to this place where we’ve been able to really increase our pace of protection, and that is an amazing thing to be part of. I feel tremendous gratitude to have this opportunity in my life right now.”

Please join us in thanking Meg for her volunteer service, as well as her monthly support of the Nature Trust as one of our NatureMakers! And thank you to East Coast Credit Union, for their ongoing support of our volunteer program.

Join Meg and the rest of the Nature Trust team at our Inspired by Nature 30th anniversary gala on April 16, 2025 – learn more.