Our Board of Directors

From 2007 to 2014, she served as President/CEO of Scottsdale Training and Rehabilitation Services (STARS); a nonprofit organization providing services and programs for developmentally disabled individuals. In 2002, Korte resigned as chair of the Board of Directors for the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce to serve as its President/CEO. She was the Executive Director of the Center for Native and Urban Wildlife at Scottsdale Community College and an adjunct faculty member at Mesa Community College and at Scottsdale Community College, where she taught General Biology and Environmental Biology.

Ms. Korte completed her second term as a member of the Scottsdale City Council in 2020, having been elected by the citizens of Scottsdale in 2013 and reelected in 2016.  Current community service includes a board position with First Things First Navajo/Apache Regional Partnership Council, President of the Pinetop Lakes Association and serving on the advisory board for Scottsdale Leadership.

Past community service includes serving on the boards of Desert Botanical Garden, McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, Scottsdale Leadership, DC Ranch Community Foundation, and the Engineering and Natural Sciences Advisory Council for Northern Arizona University. Additionally, she is the past president of the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation Board, the City of Scottsdale McDowell Sonoran Preserve Commission, the Governor’s Growing Smarter Advisory Council, the Heritage Fund Advisory Council for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, and Arizona Town Hall Board of Directors. In 1992, Korte was elected by the citizens of Maricopa County to serve on the Board of Directors for the Central Arizona Water Conservation District that governs the Central Arizona Project.

In 2019 Ms. Korte was honored by the city of Scottsdale as one of 12 Preserve Pioneers who helped lead Scottsdale’s preservation of 30,500 acres of Sonoran Desert habitat, making the McDowell Sonoran Preserve the largest urban preserve in the United States. Ms. Korte was recognized for her unwavering advocacy to adopt a nondiscrimination ordinance in Scottsdale (protecting the rights of LGBTQ communities), and recipient of the 2021 Local Heroes Award from One Community, and the 2017 Sheila Kloefkorn Individual Equality Award sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. Additionally, she received the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce Legacy Award in 2010, was inducted into Scottsdale’s History Hall of Fame in 2006, received the 2003 Preservation Champion award co-sponsored by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and McDowell Sonoran Land Trust; the 1998 Outstanding Leadership and Volunteer Award from the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce; was selected as the 1995 recipient of the Frank W. Hodges Alumni Achievement Award by Scottsdale Leadership and received the 1995 Distinguished Leadership Award by the National Association for Community Leadership.

Virginia, with her wife Beth Carson, enjoys her three stepchildren, their spouses, five grandchildren (and one on the way), and her two canine companions.