The Water Council Updates

By Karen Frost, Executive Director 2025 was a watershed year for The Water Council starting at the very top. In May we celebrated the accomplishments and retirement of our founding CEO of 15 years, Dean Amhaus. We are so grateful for his passion, vision and hard work getting The Water Council off the ground and leading it…

On June 2, Karen Frost took over leadership of The Water Council as executive director. But Karen’s roots with the organization go back a decade, when she was hired as director of small business development, later becoming vice president of economic development and innovation. Here’s a chance to learn more about Karen, whether you’re just meeting her or have known her for many years.

It’s a season of change at The Water Council, as our founding CEO Dean Amhaus plans to retire later this year and the organization recently became an affiliate of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Learn more in our March newsletter.

Dean Amhaus, president and CEO of The Water Council, reflects on 15 years of leading the organization as he announces his retirement.

With a new year, we welcome several new faces helping us fulfill our mission to solve global water challenges through innovation and water stewardship. I’m excited to introduce you to our new board directors, staff member and a leader for our workforce collaboration with Veolia North America.

The Water Council recently announced the hiring of Katie Kollhoff Mouat, our new director of innovation programs. Katie’s background as an engineer and water tech entrepreneur is perfectly suited to this new role. Learn more about Katie in this interview.

2025 is bringing major changes to the U.S. federal government that are sure to impact the water sector. How will a new White House administration and Congress affect water technology innovation in areas such as research, regulations, sustainability, tax policy and funding? Learn more about our upcoming webinars along with updates to our innovation programming and water stewardship in our January newsletter.

The Water Council got our start supporting water technology businesses in Milwaukee’s World Water Hub, and that remains the heart of our mission today. So it was humbling and gratifying to learn recently that we have been awarded a $2.5 million Regional Innovation Cluster (RIC) award from the U.S. Small Business Administration to continue building on that foundation as a mature innovation cluster.

Representatives of The Water Council are in Phuket, Thailand, as part of the U.S. Water Partnership’s Water Smart Engagements (WiSE) program, funded by the U.S. State Department.

We are pleased to announce that we have hired Joe Ferrara, an experienced business development executive, as our senior consultant for WAVE in Europe. Joe will help introduce European organizations to WAVE and contextualize program benefits for operating in Europe, particularly in light of enhanced reporting requirements such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.