Anne Lewis

After more than 30 years in public relations and marketing, including owning an agency, I became interested in public engagement for the Mississippi River. My experiences of living on both the river and the Chesapeake Bay were at the root of this interest, and I formed a nonprofit called America’s Waterway. That involvement enabled me to learn from groups like the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, America’s Great Watershed Initiative (The Nature Conservancy) and the Mississippi River/Gulf Hypoxia Assessment Task Force, as well as AmericaSpeaks and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. In 2015, I was elected to Minnesota’s Mississippi River Parkway Commission. I currently serve as its At-Large Commissioner and Secretary.

A graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN (a mile from the river) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I received a master’s degree in Communication, my husband and I have lived in Buffalo, Minnesota, Buffalo, New York, Grand Rapids, Minnesota (on the Mississippi River) and in Baltimore, Maryland. Today we live a mile from the river (and the Great River Road) in Minneapolis and have two daughters and their families living nearby.