Krista Magaw grew up in small towns in southern and eastern Ohio. Her parents haled from Stockdale, Ohio, population 200. Her father, a Methodist minister, came from a family that was, according to Krista, “solidly, traditionally, genetically Republican.” Her mother, a schoolteacher, came from a family that was “solidly, traditionally, genetically Democratic.”

While Krista’s mom was finishing her undergraduate degree at Rio Grande College, Krista and her brother stayed many childhood summers with their grandparents in Stockdale, 40 miles from the college. Along with her grandparents, Krista experienced the excitement of political conventions, with Republican and Democratic speakers rallying crowds to their cause. Just as her parents were adamant activists in their helping careers, so these politicians seemed to Krista—adamant activists about their vision for the state and the nation. 

The largest town Krista grew up in was Galion, Ohio, population15,000. Galion was in its heyday with several road equipment manufacturing companies and other industries providing good paying jobs. Then, just as Krista and her friends were graduating from high school, Galion’s industries moved to southern states and Mexico, where there were no unions, and Galion, like so many industrial cities throughout Ohio, suffered economic setbacks from which it has not yet recovered.

Krista started college early and graduated from the University of Cincinnati, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, at the age of nineteen. She was intrigued by how people’s brains work so differently. 

Her first job out of college was as a cook at a halfway house for young men on probation with mental health diagnoses. Then she worked as a part of a team in the Longview State Hospital teaching life-skills to people who had been institutionalized for much of their lives. She found the zeal of her clients to reestablish their lives in the community inspiring. In her next job, as a therapist and case manager at a satellite mental health center in Cleves, Ohio, she worked with a wide variety of clients—formerly hospitalized people, abused wives, families, and people in recovery. Realizing the magnitude of the mental health crisis in this country, Krista, with a fellowship from Duke University, took off for North Carolina to pursue a master’s degree in public policy.

Her first job out of graduate school was doing rehabilitation work in a North Carolina state hospital. After helping to create several skill training programs—that got people with persistent mental illness out into the work force—Krista, at the age of thirty, was hired as Policy and Program Director of the Office of Mental Health in the state of Pennsylvania.

Mental health policy and program work, with opportunities to plan and implement more community programs for people with serious and persistent mental illness—brought Krista back to Ohio. Krista’s husband’s job brought her family to Yellow Springs, Ohio in the fall of 1997. 

In 2001 Krista became the first executive director of Tecumseh Land Trust, a local non-profit organization that helps landowners and communities preserve farmland, natural areas, water, and historic sites and promote natural resource conservation.  

I’d never worked in conservation, but I knew about efficacy and policy and how to coordinate non-profits and government partners. Starting and fixing things that people need is what I do.