New Executive Director Nico Salter

Please join us in welcoming our new executive director, Nico Salter! Nico brings can-do energy, a love of the Hood River Valley, and knowledge of Oregon’s land-use system to his new role at Thrive. With his proven ability to mobilize the community in statewide and local campaigns, we are excited for him to lead Thrive into our next chapter.

This winter, longtime executive and policy director Heather Staten decided to follow her passion of becoming a full-time flower farmer and announced her plans to step down from Thrive in the spring. We decided to take this opportunity to meet our community’s growing needs and hire our first-ever full-time executive director. Nico will spend the next three months working alongside Heather for a smooth transition. His experience in policy development and analysis, along with his ability to connect with people from all walks of life make him the ideal choice for Thrive’s leader.

Dear friends, I am moved at the prospect of coming home and working for this mighty organization. I am aware of the generations of effort that have gone into making Thrive the unwavering steward of our unique landscape, our precious farmland, and a prosperous future for Hood River County’s generations to come.

As other agricultural hubs of the West continue to dry up, our farmers’ mission on this rich soil becomes more and more critical to our state and the nation, and so does Thrive’s. As our community grows, so does the need to thoughtfully plan livable and affordable urban spaces so that all who work in our county can also live in it, and enjoy the wildlands and open spaces we work to preserve.

I am ready to contribute to Thrive’s legacy and work with all of you to preserve Hood River Valley as one of the most desirable and dynamic rural communities in the country and continue enhancing it for the needs of future generations.

Say hello, or reach out to me anytime at nico@thrivehoodriver.org.

Best, 

Nico grew up in Spain, where his beloved grandfather irrigated carrot fields drip by drip, scraping water out of sunbaked soils without the help of glacier-fed streams. Nico discovered Hood River on his seventeenth summer and never looked back. He is forever grateful for the warm embrace and the new life his adoptive Gorge community gave him.

Before Thrive, he managed a statewide political campaign, was chief of staff for a state representative and worked alongside environmental attorneys at Friends of the Columbia Gorge. His experiences instilled in him a passion for the policy and land-use decisions that have preserved the Hood River Valley as a unique and vital agricultural hub.