Panel 2

PANELISTS

Dan Egan

Author and Journalist

Policy Fellow, School of Freshwater Sciences

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Dan Egan covered the Great Lakes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for many years. He writes occasional long-form pieces about climate change for national media outlets, including the New York Times, and is a senior water policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Freshwater Sciences.

Egan is the author of The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance and the New York Times best seller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. Twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, he has won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, John B. Oakes Award, AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, he lives in Milwaukee with his wife and children.

Dawn Martin-Hill

Indigenous Lead

Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters 

Emeritus Indigenous Studies Department, McMaster University

Dawn Martin-Hill is a member of the Mohawk Nation and resides at Six Nations of the Grand River with her family. She was the first Indigenous cultural anthropologist in Canada and continues to break barriers in education and research. She is currently the Indigenous lead for the Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters and professor emeritus of Indigenous Studies at McMaster University.

Martin-Hill's primary focus is working with communities, women, and youth to develop the capacity to apply Indigenous knowledge to resolve real-world issues such as access to clean water. She holds numerous research grants, and her work on Indigenous ecological knowledge has influenced global policy.

Martin-Hill leads a team that applies Indigenous pedagogy to disseminate complex scientific findings through storytelling, film, podcasts, virtual reality, and social media. She has been publishing Indigenous knowledge research since 1992. Her 1997 book Indigenous Knowledge & Power: the Lubicon Lake Nation documents the devastating impacts of oil and forestry extraction on the Lubicon people in northern Alberta.

She has numerous peer-reviewed and informal community publications housed at www.ohneganos.com and in the Royal Society Library. Her research has gained international acclaim. She received the University of Oklahoma Water Prize and Ohneganos' podcast 'Water is Life' won the David Suzuki People's Choice Award.

Meleah Geertsma

Director of Clean Water and Equity

Alliance for the Great Lakes

Meleah Geertsma joined the Alliance for the Great Lakes as director of clean water and equity in 2023. In this role, she is responsible for leading the Alliance's water infrastructure team, with a focus on advancing equity in access to clean drinking water and sanitation and ensuring that people are safe from flooding. Geertsma brings her dual background in law and public health to her work and a deep commitment to social justice and community-centered advocacy.

Before joining the Alliance, Geertsma spent over a decade with the Natural Resources Defense Council, focusing most recently on environmental justice and civil rights across various topics and all levels of government. She also has nearly two decades of experience working on complex air pollution issues and enjoys teaching students at colleges and universities in the Chicago area.

Geertsma holds a BA from Brown University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. After living in the Chicago area for almost 20 years, she has developed a love of the Great Lakes that almost makes up for missing the mountains of her New England home region.

Cheryl A. Watson

Climate Resilience Strategist 

Ms. Watson earned a B.A./Biology/pre-med from Northwestern University. She later achieved a M.S. in Computer Science & Telecommunication Systems from DePaul University and a Certificate in Project Management from Illinois Institute of Technology. She worked as a computer applications programmer and senior project manager in the business and telecom sector for 20 years. Answering the call for science teachers, Ms. Watson completed her M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her career as an educator in disadvantaged communities provided her the experience in teaching youth all sciences and the importance of protecting the Earth. Realizing the importance of providing relevant science instruction for high school students in public schools she transitioned to Illinois Institute of Technology Department of Education's High School Science Coach program team. This program was responsible for developing advanced high school science curriculum and educator training that included data analysis and citizen science for schools located in disadvantaged communities.

MODERATOR

Reuben Keller

Professor and Graduate Program Director, School of Environmental Sustainability

Loyola University Chicago

Reuben Keller has been on the faculty at Loyola University Chicago since August 2011. In 2024, he was awarded Faculty Member of the Year at Loyola by the Faculty Council. Before Loyola, he held post-doctoral positions at the University of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, and Cambridge University. Keller completed his PhD in David Lodge's lab at the University of Notre Dame (2001–2006). He grew up in Australia and became interested in freshwater ecology and invasive species during his undergraduate degrees at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), especially while working in Professor Sam Lake's lab.