FLOW (For Love of Water), the Great Lakes law and policy center based in Traverse City, is excited to announce the growth of our staff and board of directors.
Diane Dupuis has joined FLOW’s team as our new Development Director. Diane is working to connect FLOW with supporters and resources that propel our work to safeguard the Great Lakes for all of us.
“Like many lifelong Michiganders, as well as those who embrace Michigan later in life, I feel a fundamental connection to our waters, and, along with that, believe we all share a responsibility to protect and preserve this precious asset,” Diane said. “FLOW is the right place for me to roll up my sleeves and live my values, inspired every day amidst a landscape defined by water.”
Diane’s work in the nonprofit sector has included 10 years serving Interlochen Center for the Arts in communications and fund development roles, fundraising for two land conservancies in Michigan, and serving as campaign director for the Ann Arbor Art Center. Her past volunteer affiliations include Pathfinder School, Parallel 45 Theatre, Michigan Writers, and Washtenaw Literacy; she now serves as Vice Chair of Michigan Audubon.
“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Diane to the FLOW team,” said FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood. “Diane brings a wealth of professional knowledge and a deep commitment and connection to the Great Lakes, and is a pure joy. She is already growing our connections to others who are passionate about protecting our fresh water.”
A fun fact about Diane is that, to mark certain sentimental milestones, her family makes a point of swimming together in all five Great Lakes in deliberate succession.
FLOW also is pleased to welcome Brett Fessell and Douglas Jester to our Board of Directors.
Brett Fessell is the River Restoration Ecologist at the Grand Traverse 
Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. With degrees in fisheries, his work over decades has ranged from negotiating tribal treaty rights to watershed restoration. Although forged in formal Western science-based education and technical training, his career was truly honed and tempered through immersion within the intricate Indigenous perspectives of the natural world.
Douglas Jester is a partner at 5 Lakes Energy and specializes in utility 
regulation and energy policy, research, and modeling. Prior to joining 5 Lakes Energy, Doug served as senior energy policy advisor at the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth, where he applied scientific, engineering, and economic principles to the formation and adoption of energy policies for the state of Michigan.
“By tapping Brett Fessell’s expertise in freshwater ecology and river restoration and Douglas Jester’s facility for systems thinking and sparking clean-energy solutions,” said Kirkwood, “FLOW’s Board of Directors is well positioned to guide us through 2020 and the critical period ahead as climate change influences the quality and quantity of freshwater in the Great Lakes Basin and beyond and threatens our economy and very way of life.”
