Molly Burhans

Burhans was born in Manhattan, New York to Debra, a professor of computer science, and William, a researcher in molecular oncology, who died in 2019.^[2] Although she attended church as an adolescent, she became a practicing Catholic only while pursuing an undergraduate degree. While visiting a monastery in northwestern Pennsylvania during a weeklong service trip, she observed that the monastery lacked comprehensive land management plans, and began researching the ways that improved land management of worldwide Catholic landholdings could aid environmentalism.^[2]

In 2015, Burhans received a Master's Degree in Ecological Design from the Conway School, where she was a Sustainable Communities Initiative Fellow,^[12] and an undergraduate liberal arts degree from Canisius College.^[13] She became increasingly interested in the environmental possibilities of mapping and ecologically activating the Catholic Church's global landholdings. She attended high school at City Honors School in Buffalo, NY. She spent time at the GIS software company Esri as a visiting researcher and received a grant from them. Her company, GoodLands, now uses a variety of mapping, planning, and design technologies.^[14]