Terran became the Wise County Organizer in 2022. She spent her early childhood in Wise County, moved to Middletown, Ohio, and then returned home as a young adult after college. She took her first position at the Highlander Center as an Appalachian Transition Fellow. This program was created as a response to Americorps. Instead of bringing in young adults from elsewhere, Highlander recruited people who could develop deeper relationships within their own community and create lasting change.
Terran also served as a fellow with Appalachian Voices and the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) doing a land study. The area suffers from absentee landlords who own far more land than people who live in the community but pay very little tax on it.
For four years Terran was a reporter for the Post and the Coalfield Progress. She loved being a journalist, bringing attention to the issues in the area, but as her work with groups such as The Clinch Coalition, SAMS, and App Voices continued, she felt it was a conflict of interest for her to be so deeply involved in making the news and then reporting on it.
Terran chose to work for Virginia Organizing because, she says, “I’ve been an organizer for a long time. I like doing work that I see making a difference. I like to build leadership and show people the power they have because someone did that for me.”
When she’s not organizing, she’s an herbalist with a love for empowering people to take care of their own health.
