Bayou City Waterkeeper (BCWK) is commemorating its 25th anniversary by transitioning into a shared leadership model. BCWK’s current Executive Director, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, and Senior Legal Director, Kristen Schlemmer, will now serve as Co-Executive Directors. This change to BCWK’s leadership model was initiated by Ayanna and Kristen after nearly five years of close collaboration and approved by the Board of Directors toward the end of last year. This decision recognizes the strength of their labor and expertise, the demands of this political moment, and the need to embrace joy and rest.
As BCWK’s Executive Director since 2021, Ayanna has deepened the organization’s commitment to bold action in an increasingly difficult political climate. She stewarded the creation and implementation of a three-year strategic plan to strengthen BCWK’s impact. This led Ayanna to quadruple organizational funding while pushing for values-aligned funder relationships, expand expertise through a larger staff and new strategic partnerships, and launch a new brand and communications plan. By centering new approaches to building community power, environmental advocacy, and creativity, Ayanna co-led the development of BCWK’s first-ever policy agenda; developed partnerships to initiate research and advocacy on equitable water infrastructure funding and green stormwater infrastructure centering frontline communities; and introduced cultural strategies by developing BCWK’s first artist-in-residence program.
As Legal Director since 2018 and Waterkeeper since 2021, Kristen has innovated an approach to environmental lawyering by centering the priorities of communities impacted by water injustices and shifting litigation toward longer-term policy change. Kristen has developed new streams of legal work that have shaped BCWK’s advocacy, including leveraging sewage enforcement actions to mandate billions of dollars of overdue infrastructure investment; aiding community-led ecosystem protection and exposing the need for local and regional policy solutions through wetlands legal research and action; and, most recently, working to address localized sources of industrial water pollution as an alternative approach to coastal resilience. Kristen has served as the organization’s Interim Executive Director twice and led internal work to clarify BCWK’s commitment to its organizational values of justice and equity.
Six months of deep groundwork precede this announcement, resulting in alignment on vision, values, roles, and decision-making among the two leaders. As Co-Executive Directors, Ayanna and Kristen will steward Bayou City Waterkeeper’s strategic direction and implementation, partnerships, staff management, and governance together. Ayanna will continue to lead on cultural strategies, finances, and grant fundraising and foundation relations. Kristen will lead legal strategies, legal compliance and risk management, and individual donor and membership development.
Bayou City Waterkeeper’s core values — interconnectivity, fluidity, bold action, justice and equity, and regeneration — shaped this transition. Two of these values are prioritized in this milestone year: bold action, recognizing that our efforts must disrupt systems that have not worked, create new frameworks, and bring together unconventional allies, and regeneration, in which we build the world that we want through our everyday actions, create new visions, and transition our world into the one we want, which embraces water as a site for healing, joy, celebration, reflection, and growth.
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Bayou City Waterkeeper was founded in 2001 as a volunteer-run organization focused on using bold legal action to protect coastal ecosystems. Since our founding, BCWK has emerged as a leader in water advocacy in the Houston region, protecting the region’s waters and communities through bold legal action, community science, and creative, grassroots policy to further justice, health, and safety for our region. BCWK envisions a Houston where water is a catalyst for change. By connecting community, place, policies, and systems we collaboratively advance equitable distributions of power and resources towards life, joy, and regeneration for our watershed.