Wierzbicki.CPCAngie Wierzbicki is a bit of a nature lover. She said she loves the quiet and the solitude that comes with hiking or biking on a secluded trail.

That inclination made her a natural fit for her new job as executive director of the Cullinan Park Conservancy, which has begun an ambitious drive to raise $10 million over the next 10 years to rehab and improve Cullinan Park, the 754-acre nature park annexed last year by the City of Sugar Land.

“People are so attached to their screens all day, we don’t get to walk around and be alone with our thoughts very much,” Wierzbicki said.

Wierzbicki holds a master’s degree in recreation, park and tourism administration; she has developed nature-based tourism programs for towns that have seen employers leave and their downtowns decline. And she has worked for a number of nonprofit agencies, most recently Fort Bend Cares.

Throughout college, and later in Africa as a volunteer for the Peace Corps, Wierzbicki rode a bicycle nearly everywhere. She tries to keep up the practice, but she said it can be difficult in car-centric Fort Bend County.

“I’ll ride my bike to a meeting if it’s within a couple miles,” she said. “I always said I’d either live in the city or out in the country, never in the suburbs, but here I am.”

Wierzbicki lives in Missouri City with her husband, where he works for the city as a forester and a horticulturalist. The couple try to do things outdoors together as much as possible, she said, and they helped to found Missouri City Green in 2010, a program that promotes recycling and beautification.

As the conservancy’s executive director Wierzbicki’s responsibilities vary by the day. She said she works to drum up awareness of Cullinan Park, and she does a host of odd tasks, whatever the conservancy’s board of directors might need.

A big part of her job is soliciting donations and organizing fundraising events that will move the conservancy toward its multimillion-dollar goals. She said only a tiny percentage of money donated each year goes to nature and conservation-related causes.

“People just assume a city will pay for nature conservation,” she said. “And they don’t realize how expensive keeping up a park is.”

Wierzbicki has also begun giving impromptu, informal tours of Cullinan Park to potential donors and friends alike.

“Friends will call up and say, ‘What do you want to do? Want to get coffee?’ And I’ll say, ‘How ‘bout we go to the park? I’m almost in tour guide mode when I take people out there, though I’m not an expert…yet,” she said.