Mary Poole is a nonprofit leader in Missoula, Montana. As the Executive Director of Soft Landing Missoula, she works with an amazing team to make sure refugees and immigrants in Missoula have the opportunity, dignity, and a warm welcome in their new home. In 2015 upon witnessing the horrors of the Syrian civil war and being encouraged by other amazing women leaders in her life to be able to start small and make big change (including the founder of this very conference!), Mary co-founded Soft Landing when Montana was only one of two states in the nation that did not have a path to welcome refugees. She and her team have now grown Soft Landing into an organization with 12 full-time staff (all women!) and hundreds of volunteers that serve over 150 families who have arrived in Missoula as refugees and immigrants since 2016. She is inspired every day by the amazing people she gets to work with and they have shaped the values that guide her work and her life- Community, Equity, Creativity, Kindness, Trust, and Joy. 

Mary is a mom to two mostly feral children and spends most of her free time outside enjoying movement in all seasons with her family and spunky Jack Russel- Eddy.