Blog

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 Board and I are very proud of and greatly appreciate the tireless work that the team provides, playing an important part in solving global water challenges by driving freshwater technologies and advancing stewardship across the U.S. and abroad. Read on to learn how we did that in 2024.

As fall is a time of transition, so too is The Water Council transitioning in our work as we plan for 2025 and beyond. We just wrapped up our first Nexus Sustainability Leaders Summit with much positive feedback, and now we turn our attention to ramping up our small business offerings through our Regional Innovation Cluster Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Read more about both of those initiatives in our monthly 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.

AI is on everyone’s minds these days, so we are excited to bring a leading AI expert from Microsoft to our Nexus Sustainability Leaders Summit. Read more about that and updates to our Water + Energy Forward Engine in our monthly newsletter.

We are proud to announce we have submitted the pre-proposal for our Water + Energy Forward Engine to the National Science Foundation, representing more than a year and a half of hard work for us and our partners. Learn about that and more in our August newsletter.

This week, the city is welcoming 50,000 delegates, journalists, lobbyists and others for the Republican National Convention. I’m confident the visitors will leave with appreciation for our beautiful city and its freshwater resources. Last month, we welcomed a much smaller group to Milwaukee – the 2024 participants in our BREW 2.0 Post-Accelerator. Learn about that and more in our July newsletter.