Longtime Great Smoky Mountains National Park spokeswoman heads to Friends of Smokies

Dana Soehn was a major voice of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for years and now will be a strong advocate for the park as the new CEO/president of Friends of the Smokies.

She’s gone from park spokeswoman and executive team member to overseer of projects that the nonprofit Friends of the Smokies sponsors to raise money and support the park.

You might say she transitioned to the new job as part of a spiritual journey she took in March to the Holy Land. An earlier mission trip to Zimbabwe in December helped clear the way, too, when she realized an opportunity was there to continue to love and care for the park but in a different way.

Soehn, who began her new job April 3, was interviewed April 23 at the Friends office in the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center in Kodak. The day I visited there was a whirlwind of activity on the Friends’ side of the building. On the first floor, staff had auction items being organized for the Friends’ next fundraiser, the Greenbrier barn party on May 12, which is sold out. On the second floor, volunteers were counting money from collection boxes throughout the park.

Soehn mentioned there was some concern that collections might fall off when the park started charging visitors to park in March but that hasn’t been the case, she said.

Soehn began working for the national park soon after graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1992. Her major was wildlife and fisheries science with a minor in forestry. In 1995, she got a master's degree from West Virginia University in the same field. She said her master’s thesis assessed the size of forest disturbance and associated impacts to salamander populations.

As Dana Williams, formerly of Aurora, Missouri, she married Heath Soehn on Oct. 26, 1991, at the old Wonderland Hotel in the Elkmont area of the park. Today, he’s a retired park ranger. The couple has two sons, Grant, 25, and Garrett, 23.

In her jobs at the park, she worked on building community relationships, creating private-public partnership opportunities, developing strategic communications and coordinating large events. She represented the park with congressional delegations, community leaders, descendant groups and partners in Tennessee and North Carolina, including Friends.

Soehn has had responsibilities extending beyond the Smokies. Her experience has included serving as acting chief of public affairs and chief spokesperson for the National Park Service.

In 2020, when then President Donald Trump visited Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for an Independence Day celebration, she was on assignment to help deal with the press. At the time, there were questions about the visit in light of COVID-19.

She said in an interview then that she volunteered to be the lead public information officer and worked with two other NPS employees to provide over 40 media interviews and responses. CNN’s reporting was particularly critical, saying some staff wore masks and others did not and there was no social distancing as attendees were clustered together in stadium seating. Soehn wore a mask at the event.

She was in a job transition at the Smokies when contacted by a member of the national executive search firm, Potrero Group, about applying for the top position at Friends. At the park, she was leaving the position as spokesperson and was charged by Superintendent Cassius Cash with leading a strategic operations plan. At age 54, she also was thinking about retiring sometime between the ages of 58 and 60.

“I had a full plate of things I was working on,” she said.

She had attended the Friends board meeting in November as part of her assignment with the park when contacted by the Potrero Group. A Friends board member had recommended to the group that Soehn be approached about applying. Soehn said she was never approached about applying by any board member, and, in fact, the way the process worked, she wasn’t in touch with any board members until she became one of six finalists. About 130 people applied.

She did have an ethics problem that had to be addressed, since she was the park’s liaison to the Friends board. It had to be worked out with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., she said.

“I completely recused myself with Friends,” she said.

Meanwhile, in December before she was thoroughly vetted by Potrero, she and her husband went on a mission trip to Zimbabwe sponsored by First Baptist Church of Gatlinburg.

“I had two weeks to reflect on how best to serve the park and the community,” she said. She thought about how busy it had been at the park with record-breaking number of visitors and dealing with COVID.  “I came to see it as a pretty eye-opening opportunity,” she said.

After becoming one of six finalists, she then became one of three finalists who had in-person interviews with board members.

In a way, it’s not surprising she was chosen.

“I have a unique perspective on the challenges of the park,” she said, listing the experiences of learning about the diversity of the place in numerous forms, from the plants and critters to the people who lived in the area before the park was established in 1934. She’s helped teach others to understand the park and the stewardship required and been part of the superintendent’s team in getting to know leaders around the park.

“The only way to meet challenges is to work with partnerships,” she said.

Soehn is spending the first three months listening to others, she said. She said there is a lot to learn about the “behind the scenes” part of the organization. She’s found she’s leading a nine-woman full-time staff plus two other women who are part-time and two men who are part-time.

This is the 30th anniversary of Friends and she plans to meet with two other executives who proceeded her. They are Charles Maynard, Jim Hart and Tim Chandler. “Jim Hart has committed to help me,” she said.

Soehn’s office used to belong to Hart, a former executive who returned to the organization temporarily when Chandler left the top executive position in September. She and Hart talk regularly, she said. Until he comes and picks up a standing desk left behind, Soehn said she intends to use it.

During the interview, Soehn also talked about her recent trip to the Holy Land, which she called a “once in a lifetime” experience. The trip was arranged by the pastor of a United Methodist Church in Kansas where her sister, Debi Williams Nixon, works.

This is what Soehn wrote on Facebook about the trip: “It was a breathtaking experience and we were overwhelmed by the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the sights, sounds, and feel of the landscape and stone paths where Jesus walked. We were mindful of the painful division of people now living in these historic lands and hope one day to see peace. So grateful for this chance to grow our faith and understanding.”

She heard from Christians, Jews and Muslims. She said talks helped them “better understand each of the religious groups and the shared interests in that experience.” She said they made relevant today’s conflicts in the region.

They visited Bethlehem, the biblical place of Jesus’ birth in the East Bank of Palestine, to the area outside Jerusalem, in Israel, where it is believed Jesus was crucified. The tour included visits to holy sites that include national parks, she said.

“I was so grateful that many holy sites were protected as part of the Israeli National Park system. As a part of parks, landscapes surrounding sites were also protected which provided an opportunity to better visualize the historic setting,” she said.

In looking ahead in her new job, Soehn has an optimistic spirit about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that she is known for.

“I am deeply committed to the park. I care deeply about protecting the park in all its diversity. I may work until I’m 100. I feel clearly about what I do,” she said.

Knoxville businesswoman Sharon Pryse, who chairs the Friends board, is happy that Soehn became interested in the job and applied.

“We’re excited to have her. She’s definitely passionate about the Smokies. She understands Friends of the Smokies and understands Friends’ contribution to the Smokies,” Pryse said.

Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Great Smoky Mountains National Park spokeswoman heads to Friends of Smokies