MountainTrue’s 2026 Award Winners

Every year, MountainTrue recognizes five individuals from across the Southern Blue Ridge as our regional Volunteer of the Year and Esther Cunningham award winners. This year, we’ll also recognize two new award categories: Partner of the Year and Government Partner of the Year. We’ll celebrate these exceptional MountainTrue volunteers at our 2026 Annual Member Gathering – Homegrown Hope – on Thursday, October 8, at Highland Brewing in Asheville, NC.

MountainTrue’s regional Volunteer of the Year Award winners include:

High Country Region: Renner Murphy

Renner has been a long-time Swim Guide volunteer and supporter of MountainTrue’s High Country programs, taking on multiple sampling sites along the New River every Wednesday morning for years now. Renner always shows up to our community events with a smile, a hug, and support for our work, and she often reps our merch around Boone and Blowing Rock. She goes above and beyond to help us document our Swim Guide sampling season with great photos and videos, and is always timely and prepared for her weekly sampling duties. 

Foothills Region: Raiden Lilburn

Raiden has been volunteering consistently with us since the hurricane. From showing up to support our relief efforts, volunteering in the field with our debris crews, and scouting sections of the river with us, to water sampling, Raiden is consistently there to support MountainTrue and the Green Riverkeeper program. He is an exceptional volunteer and is someone who truly loves and gets excited to be a part of the MountainTrue family. Green Riverkeeper Erica Shanks can’t say enough good things about Raiden. Oh, did we mention he is only 15?! Raiden is a true go-getter. 

Southwestern Region: Traci Kuykendall

Traci has been one of the main drivers of the Cherokee County public lands petition campaign. She regularly attends and is an active participant at committee meetings and commissioners’ meetings. Speaks during public comment. She actually created the first draft of the petition, and she was almost the sole social media push for the campaign. She found and reserved the location for the campaign’s poster-making party. Traci is super involved, and the campaign is stronger because of her! 

Land of Sky Region: Jay Hawthorne

Jay is a long-time volunteer and supporter of the French Broad Riverkeeper program. He has been instrumental in helping us secure landowner agreements to help our Debris Team utilize private property access and clean up debris in the French Broad River. Jay continues to join our volunteer cleanups and has been a great help in removing debris from section 9 of the French Broad. He has also been a very active participant in MountainTrue’s public pressure campaign to ensure IPEX does its part to clean up the river. 

A statement from Jay: 

“I would like several points to be made. First, I’m honored and humbled by this award. And this was a large, lengthy effort with many people playing important roles. I’m proud to say I was one of them.

1. In early November, Fritz Johnson of Blue Heron Whitewater was the first to launch into the huge piles on railroad tracks beside the river. According to Norfolk Southern, it was the largest single deposition of debris between Newport and Asheville. We worked to start extracting PVC pipe/tubing and any other man-made debris that folks with simple tools could get. She generated funding to help pay the guides and others who were out of work and doing this dangerous task. Our team of retired resident volunteers from French Broad Crossing helped her for most of winter 2025.
2. Jemima Fliss-Cook took the initiative to cross the river with rafts and her husband’s jet boat to get materials on the other side where there was no road access. She convinced reluctant property owners to let her team access the debris piles there.
3. MountainTrue leadership won the DEQ grant, which allowed enormous expansion of Jemima’s work with other teams set up under River Clean-up Operations Director Jon Stamper. This was especially important after FEMA disallowed six previously approved remediation sites.
4. French Broad Paddle Trail Manager Jack Henderson identified the right contractor with large-scale equipment and courage to take on the task of fording the river and retrieving PVC and other debris using Jemima’s team for support. 
5. French Broad Riverkeeper Anna Alsobrook tenaciously connected with IPEX North American management in Canada and convinced them to finally do the right thing.”

2026 Esther Cunningham Award Winner: Joel Osgood

This award is given each year in honor of one of our organization’s founders, Esther Cunningham. In many ways, Esther was an ordinary person – born and raised in Macon County, a mother and a grandmother, a teacher, a beauty shop owner, and an active community volunteer. Then one day she learned about plans the Forest Service had to explore for oil and gas in her beloved mountains, which prompted her to become a full-time crusader for her mountains and the larger environment. From then on, she bravely stood up, rallied her community, and tirelessly fought to protect and defend the forests of Western North Carolina. All of us here today represent her legacy.

So we give this award to people who have fought the fight, often dedicating their lives to these battles, who win some, lose some, but always keep fighting.

For more than a decade, Joel Osgood has helped communities across Western North Carolina envision and create meaningful places through thoughtful design. As a landscape architect and founder of Osgood Landscape Architecture in Asheville, Joel’s work centers on connecting people to the natural and cultural landscapes that make our region unique.

Joel’s journey with the Appalachian Design Center (ADC) began long before its merger with MountainTrue. After volunteering on various community projects, he joined the Asheville Design Center Board in 2013 and remained through the organization’s transition into MountainTrue. Today, he continues to serve on the Advisory Committee and volunteer on community design projects in Marshall and Hot Springs.

“ADC has been an important part of my professional and personal journey for well over a decade,” he shared. “It even inspired me to start my own landscape architecture firm in 2014.”

Read more about Joel here.

2026 MountainTrue Partner of the Year: Latinos Aventureros 

Latinos Aventureros is a bilingual group dedicated to bringing new people to outdoor recreation and conservation and increasing Latino participation in public lands. Founded in 2001 by Vivianette Ortiz, what started as one hike has become a community movement with more than 11,000 members, 30 volunteer leaders, and over 485 bilingual events across four states.  Latinos Aventureros has been a partner of MountainTrue for years, and in some ways this award is overdue. Latinos Aventureros has partnered with MountainTrue on hikes, paddle trips, river cleanups, invasive plant removal, and advocacy to save the 2001 Roadless Rule. Latinos Aventureros has included MountainTrue in their Leadership Summit, their annual campout, and many outings. Latinos Aventureros, like MountainTrue, believes in “protecting the places we share” and has brought thousands of new people to that effort. For their exceptional commitment to conserving, enjoying, and sharing public land, Latinos Aventureros is MountainTrue’s 2026 Non-Profit Partner of the Year!

2026 MountainTrue Government Partner of the Year: NC Department of Environmental Quality

Remarks from MountainTrue Clean Waters Director Hartwell Carson (former French Broad Riverkeeper): 

“When I started as a Riverkeeper over 20 years ago, I was wary of state assistance. But the consistent persistence of our local DEQ office changed my mind.

We started by hauling 100 tires out of the French Broad River, discovering a shared goal of clean water. Later, while I was manually copying reports at their office, the supervisor handed me a memory stick with all the files. That simple act showed DEQ wasn’t out to get us, and that we were partners.

I realized we could rely on them, and together we built a productive relationship.

We moved from small projects, like sharing files and cleaning up tires, to jointly responding to fish kills, oil spills, and tanker truck accidents. I remember standing on a hill around 9:00 p.m. one night, watching a foul white liquid spill into the Laurel River from an overturned tanker truck. The fire department had blocked off the road and immediate area, so I slipped through the woods to get a closer look. I was appalled as the river turned white, and no one seemed to be responding with the urgency that I thought the situation required. I called Landon Davidson, the DEQ supervisor in Asheville. Not only did he answer, but he immediately sprang into action and dispatched a crew to monitor and assess the situation.

We eventually did big hard things such as working together to update North Carolina’s water quality standards to a modern E. coli standard and developing real-time E. coli monitoring.

When Hurricane Helene hit, we knew it was time to execute the biggest and boldest idea we had ever conceived. We needed an army of cleanup crews to bring our rivers back from the brink. We went to the North Carolina General Assembly, presented the state of our waterways, and outlined the resources necessary to clean them up. Working closely with DEQ, we secured $10 million to hire 100 people, cleaning up hundreds of miles of streams and removing more than 5 million pounds of trash over the last two years.

Now, we are partnering again to repair hundreds of failing septic systems across Western North Carolina.

Thanks to this relationship, our waterways are cleaner, our economy is stronger, and communities are recovering post-storm. Please join me in showing our thanks to NCDEQ.”