• Katie Breckheimer received the Esther Cunningham Award, MountainTrue’s most prestigious award. Breckheimer founded the Western North Carolina Alliance and was crucial to the success of the 2015 merger between the Environmental and Conservation Organization, WNCA and the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance that created MountainTrue. Soon after the merger she served a term as MountainTrue’s board chair. 
• Charlie Swor has been named Volunteer of the Year for the western region. As the former secretary of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s board of directors, Swor worked on the complex merger between HRWC and MountainTrue that occurred this past summer. He also participates in MountainTrue’s volunteer water quality monitoring program and spearheaded a partnership between Young Harris College and HRWC to manage the Corn Creek riparian corridor. 
• Erin Gregory was named Volunteer of the Year for the central region. She has been a key volunteer with the French Broad Riverkeeper program for the past two years, spending hours each week collecting water samples that have led to the team finding three major sewer issues. Gregory also created a French Broad River Festival and prompted Asheville Yoga Center to designate MountainTrue as its Charity of the Month. 
• Chris Souhrada was named Volunteer of the Year for the High Country region for his work in Banner Elk as a water quality volunteer with the Volunteer Water Information Network. 
• Kay Shurtleff and Lucy Butler were named Volunteers of the Year for the southern region. They have participated in water quality monitoring programs for over a decade, together coordinating more than 30 water testing sites by collecting samples from volunteers and transporting them to the lab each month. They have been instrumental in a variety of other initiatives as well. 

MountainTrue engages in policy advocacy and environmental restoration projects in 29 counties, with offices in Boone, Murphy, Asheville and Hendersonville.