Rebecca Meuninck, Co-Chair, Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition and Executive Director, Great Lakes Regional Center, National Wildlife Federation

Moderator

Crystal Davis, Vice President of Policy and Strategic Engagement, Alliance for the Great Lakes

Panelists

Kim Foreman, Executive Director, Environmental Health Watch

Da’Na Langford, CEO & Medical Director, Village of Healing

Jade Davis, Senior Vice-President, Public Affairs and Energy Policy, Port of Cleveland

Shanelle Smith Whigham, Senior Vice President and Director of Community Relations and Corporate Initiatives, Key Bank

The plastics crisis demands collaborative problem solving and systemic solutions to reduce the harms plastics have on human and environmental health. Join members of the Plastic-Free MKE and Plastic-Free Cleveland coalitions to hear how they are working to build and expand their local movements to reduce plastics and participate in a collaborative visioning session to kickstart or enhance ideas for reducing plastics in your own community!

Leah Holloway, Program Manager, Milwaukee Riverkeeper

Deidre Peroff, PhD, Social Science Outreach Specialist, Sea Grant, University of Wisconsin

Jill Bartolotta, Extension Educator, Ohio Sea Grant

Clean Wisconsin is excited to present their dynamic strategy for advancing green infrastructure policies through sharing a case study of their work in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Through targeted engagement with diverse stakeholder groups, we built promising partnerships and created a resource rich in policy and engagement ideas for creating more sustainable cities in Wisconsin. This resource, the Green Infrastructure Toolkit for Wisconsin Municipalities, was informed by qualitative and quantitative research that also demonstrates its need and promise to be useful in advancing sustainable policies and practices at the municipal level.

Zoe Goodrow, Coastal Program Manager, Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative

Nancy Retana, Resilient Communities Program Director, Clean Wisconsin

Michigan’s first Indigenous-led, multi-agency collaborative created under the Regional Conservation Partnership Program authority to restore and protect the ecology of streams and rivers across the entire northwest Lower Michigan will be showcased during this session. Key staff leading the Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative will share lessons learned and highlight successes in implementing this 20+ agency collaborative that has opened over 281 miles of stream habitat and protected over 3,500 acres from development.

DJ Shook, Biologist and Senior Project Manager, Conservation Resource Alliance