Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
Liz Kirkwood oversees FLOW’s policy, legal, technical and communications work. After working as an environmental lawyer in both the U.S. and overseas, she has returned to the nonprofit sector because she is mission-driven and passionate about protecting the Great Lakes. Read more here.
What connected you to the Great Lakes: The magic of the Great Lakes lured me to permanently move here after years of summering along the shores of Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan.
Favorite place in Michigan: This is it. This whole region of northern lower Michigan is my favorite place. I just am angling for more time to explore and adventure with friends and family.
Fun fact: I still dream of being a photographer. I spent most of high school in a photo lab developing silver gelatin photographs.
Read more about Liz Kirkwood here: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director of FLOW, is Our Great Lakes Guardian | MyNorth.com | Aug. 22, 2019. And listen here: Elizabeth Kirkwood on Fulfillament | Nov. 12, 2018.
Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor
Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor
Dave Dempsey has 35 years' experience in environmental policy. He served as environmental advisor to former Michigan Governor James Blanchard and as policy advisor on the staff of the International Joint Commission. He has also provided policy support to the Michigan Environmental Council and Clean Water Action. He has authored several books on the Great Lakes and water protection. Read more here.
Favorite Great Lakes activity: Watching sunrise from southern Lake Huron.
Favorite Great Lakes book: Freshwater: Women Writing on the Great Lakes, edited by Alison Swan.
Favorite Great Lakes fact: It takes 173 years for nature to replenish all the water in Lake Superior.
How Supporters Can Energize FLOW's Next 10 Years: Donate to the Olson-Dempsey Fund.
Diane Dupuis, Senior Advancement Advisor
Diane Dupuis, Senior Advancement Advisor
Diane Dupuis works to connect FLOW with resources that can help fuel the work of safeguarding the Great Lakes for all. Read more here.
What connected you to the Great Lakes: I grew up breathing the scent of big fresh water, listening to Great Lakes freighters salute one another in passage, and playing on shores from Oscoda to Paradise and Ipperwash to Naubinway. Now I am happiest when I'm paddling, whether it's on Lake Dubonnet, along the Huron River, or among the Apostle Islands.
Favorite place in Michigan: Esch Beach, in all seasons.
Fun fact: To mark certain sentimental milestones, our family has made a point of swimming together in all five Great Lakes in deliberate succession.
Read more about Diane Dupuis: Make It Rain -- Diane Dupuis Is Here to Help Us Fund the Fight of the Great Lakes' Life | Nov. 16, 2019 | Northern Express.
Jim Olson, Founder and Senior Legal Advisor
Jim Olson, Founder and Senior Legal Advisor
Jim Olson has nearly 50 years of experience as an environmental, water, and public interest law advocate and champion, dedicated to protecting waters and ecosystems in the Great Lakes Basin. Jim currently contributes to FLOW’s legal and policy work, including policy analyses, law review articles, comments, reports, and other publications. He also speaks on behalf of the organization through presentations, lectures, and panel discussions. Read more here.
What connected you to the Great Lakes: Polling a home-made raft with my brothers up and down the shore of the East Arm of Grand Traverse Bay. I was fortunate that my parents moved their family—two girls, three boys—to Traverse City, by the time I was 5 years old we lived on the Bay, so, we grew up in and on the bay, felt its cold and warm temperatures, sensed its sweetwater smell, moods, its seasons and cycles, seches’ that flooded the beach, tore out docks, flipped over moored boats, ice skating, fishing, watersports, dressing up like pirates and pushing each other off row boats into the water.
Favorite place in Michigan: There are so many places that are “favorites,” it’s hard to say—Michigan’s beauty is soft, gentle, rough, rugged, and diverse from the ends of both peninsulas to the other ends. A few places-- Cathead Point, Lake Michigan’s Dunes, and vistas from the worn down mountains, cliffs and beaches that rim Marquette and Lake Superior.
Favorite Great Lakes fact: The distance from the border of southeastern Michigan to Ironwood and Michigan's border with Wisconsin in the Upper Peninsula is almost 650 miles--an 11-hour drive! Perhaps, longer than any distance within any state in the lower forty-eight! With lots of shoreline, rivers, lakes, creeks, wetlands, wildlife, pastures, farms, hills, and ridges, Great Lakes shoreline all the way.
How Supporters Can Energize FLOW's Next 10 Years: Donate to the Olson-Dempsey Fund.
Zach Welcker, Legal Director
Zach Welcker, Legal Director
Zach Welcker is FLOW’s first full-time legal director, responsible for building on FLOW’s legal power, policy acumen, and partnerships—especially among tribes, conservation groups, frontline communities, justice organizations, and scientists—to ensure the waters of the Great Lakes Basin are healthy, public, and protected for all.
Before joining FLOW, Zach spent more than a decade representing Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest on water, fisheries, and other natural resource issues. He was an associate attorney at Kanji & Katzen, PLLC from 2009-2012 and worked as a legal and policy advisor for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians from 2012-2021.
Zach began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Procter Hug, Jr. with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law.
What connected you to the Great Lakes: My childhood, my people, da Bears, and the water.
Favorite place in Michigan: This week, a beach in Suttons Bay.
What's a fun fact about you: Both of my kids were born in the water.
Read more about Zach Welcker here: Jim Olson Passes the Torch to Zach Welcker, FLOW’s First Full-Time Legal Director | FLOW | Dec. 9, 2021.
