Leaders in Stormwater: KATE FRITZ

This month’s Leader in Stormwater has led the growth of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay (Alliance) considerably, doubling the staff to 60 incredible team members, and tripling their budget to $18M, funding critical and impactful work on the ground around the Chesapeake - Kate Fritz, CEO.

As a kid, Kate’s family moved around, giving her the chance to experience watersheds and landscapes across the US and Brazil - Kate spent as much time outdoors as possible. For her birthday, Kate's mother gave her a large cosmetic box which she promptly turned into a tackle box to fish in their neighborhood lake. Once grown, Kate carried her passion for nature into her work, collecting forest and wetland delineations and water quality field data to evaluate the effectiveness of SWM practices. This firsthand experience observing how land use impacts our waterways hooked her into this area of expertise. 

Over her career, Kate has found a true love for nonprofit work in the environmental restoration space. She's been in nonprofit leadership for 9 years and has had incredible mentors along the way, but calls out Kincey Potter who led from a place of passion and action and championed Kate into the role of Executive Director while working together at the South River Foundation. Kate says, “I know Kincey has influenced many young female leaders in the environmental field, and [her] legacy lives on with how I approach my work". Now with the Alliance for 6 years where she oversees all functional parts of the program - implementation, finances, leadership, fundraising, operational excellence - Kate describes her role as “clearing roadblocks for the staff to go out and do impactful work with [their] partners.” Kate explains that working to be part of the SWM solution in the Chesapeake is what continues to draw her in. As the impacts of climate change become more evident, SWM is a persistent challenge that requires innovation and adaptive management to create better systems. This inspires her to maintain focus on restoring the rivers and streams of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. She says, “the health of these natural systems is a reflection of how we’re managing, or not managing, our resources”.

These days, Kate is a member (first female in 124 years!) of a hunting and fishing club in the Poconos, and recently picked up fly fishing as it merges many of her interests, all while leaving any mental baggage on the banks as she wades into the stream to relax. Kate points out the outdoors should be accessible to all and the SWM industry needs to equitably restore the ecosystems' functions. She explains underrepresented communities are most harmed by pollution and other negative environmental impacts. She says, “It is incumbent upon us as practitioners, to make sure we are including as many voices at our collective tables as possible - and that we’re listening. We will have robust, longer-lasting and better outcomes when we keep an eye towards inclusion in the work we do.”