One week on the job, Lori Kent is quite busy as newly-installed executive director for Friends of Land Between the Lakes.
A Marshall County native with strong ties to west Kentucky and Murray State University, Kent has a rather long list of things she’d like to accomplish as soon as possible — in order to maintain the mission of working with public and private stakeholders to help fully-steward the LBL National Recreation Area, which each year proves to be more difficult than the previous.
A 1998 graduate with her bachelor’s in public relations and political science from Murray State University, Kent’s resume is lengthy. She served as the public information officer for the Marshall County Fiscal Court right out of college, and followed that with nearly four years of service with the American Cancer Society as both a development project manager and area director.
After three years as a training coordinator at the Marshall County Health Department, Kent went on to be the Area 1 Manager and State Earthquake Program Manager for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management, before becoming the director of administrative services at the Marshall County Health Department in April of 2009.
Following nearly two years as a senior account executive at Solstas Lab Partners, Kent took an opportunity within Passport Health Plan — where she worked for more than eight years before accepting this position within LBL.
All through that time, Kent finished up a master’s degree in public administration and mass communications at Murray State in 2000, and 17 years later returned to begin a doctoral program with the Racers in P-20 and Community Leadership — which she obtained in 2020.
And it’s the kind of degree she hopes translates into her new position.
Kent follows in the footsteps of the last two executive directors in John Rufli and Aviva Yasgur, and hopes she brings a sense of understanding to the position after having spent all of her life in west Kentucky.
Kent answers to a Board of Trustees that includes representatives from Cadiz, Murray, Almo, Mayfield, Paducah and Dover, Tennessee.
