Welcome Alecia to the PCEC Team
Alecia at the 2025 Youth Climate Summit
It is with great excitement that we welcome Alecia Jongeward to the PCEC team in 2026. Many of you already know Alecia – she brings infectious enthusiasm to everything she does, seems to know everyone and has a superpower for connecting people and ideas and creating world-class opportunities for Park County youth. We have had the pleasure of working with Alecia for several years as a contractor, where she helped PCEC build and strengthen our education programs. Now, with the generous support of the Murdock Charitable Trust, we are thrilled to bring Alecia onboard as the Director of Education and Advocacy!
Alecia recently reflected that when she walked into her first PCEC community event, she didn't see a room full of distant experts—she saw her neighbors. Parents, kids, retirees and community members working together convinced her that protecting this wild ecosystem and building resilient communities wasn’t just a job for specialists. It takes all of us. That belief continues to guide her work and leadership.
In her new role, Alecia will lead and develop PCEC’s youth and community outreach into a unified engine for habitat protection and climate resilience. By integrating her deep technical knowledge with leadership development and relationship building, she will empower people to move from awareness to community-led action. Her goal is to ensure that the people of Park County–of all ages–are equipped to navigate an increasingly complex environmental and political landscape through informed, local advocacy.
Alecia brings a wealth of pedagogical expertise to the PCEC team—she holds a Master’s in Science Education and a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Montana State University. Her career spans years of science education in museums, outdoor organizations, and the high school classroom. At the heart of all of this work is her deep love for students and learners of every age, from young people just finding their voice to adults stepping into leadership roles in their communities.
Since 2017, Alecia has specialized in youth-led conservation, advising the Park High Green Initiative and collaborating with conservation partners across the state. In 2023, Alecia worked with PCEC to organize and host the first Montana Youth Climate Summit—a youth-powered gathering of high school students from across the state, which she successfully led again last fall.
A resident of Livingston, Alecia is a dedicated advocate for the Yellowstone River and the rural heritage of the region. Outside of work, you’ll likely find her skiing, hiking, rowing down a river, or exploring the backcountry with her husband, Eric, and their dog, Indy.
If you see Alecia around, be sure to say hello, and ask her what one of her former students is doing now. She’ll almost certainly have a great story about a Green Initiative student in graduate school, part of a startup company, or something exciting and impactful for conservation and their community.