Lars Leland is the Executive Director for the Port of Mattawa. He has worked for the Port since 2014 and is an active member of his community, Mattawa/Desert-Aire Lions Club, Mattawa Area Chamber of Commerce and the Wahluke Community Coalition. He worked together with the City of Mattawa redeveloping the main arterial of downtown Mattawa and helped the Chamber and the Wahluke School District on developing a large community center.

Lars was born in raised in the Mattawa Area. He grew up on his family farm, Leland & Sons Inc; growing a wide variety of crops, corn, wheat, buckwheat, potatoes, grass, apples and cherries. His father Glenn Leland moved to Mattawa in 1974, breaking his own land which he still farms to this day. Lars graduated from the Wahluke School District and continued on to earn a bachelor’s of Economics and Business from Washington State University in Pullman. He traveled Europe and Southeast Asia. He moved back to Mattawa and married his high school sweet heart Maria Astrain.