Keynote Spotlight: Jordan Lubetkin to Speak at 2025 KAEE Conference

We are excited to announce that Jordan Lubetkin will be the keynote speaker for the 2025 Kentucky Association for Environmental Education (KAEE) Conference this fall in Owensboro, Kentucky. This year's conference will include environmental educators from around the state and beyond, for an incredible few days of learning, connecting with others, and finding inspiration. 

Jordan Lubetkin serves as the Ohio River Basin Director for the National Wildlife Federation, and brings perspective, experience, and passion to this year's keynote. In this position, he leads the work to restore and protect the interrelated waters of the Ohio River Basin.

This is a critical and impactful area that covers parts of 14 states and two federally recognized Tribal Nations. The Basin is home to more than 30 million people, whose drinking water, jobs, and overall quality of life depend on the waters of this Basin.

Over the past few years, Jordan has helped lead a planning process to develop a plan for a regional restoration plan that addresses the environmental challenges and threats facing the Basin. He organized and facilitated 31 community listening sessions across the Basin in 2022 and 2023 with the Ohio River Basin Alliance. These sessions shaped a 2024 report titled Community Priorities for Ohio River Basin Restoration and Protection. This work will help make sure future investments in the Ohio River Basin are supported and guided by community knowledge and the lived experience of people most affected by these issues. 

Jordan was involved with not only the regional planning work but he has also spent time developing relationships with Tribal Nations that reside in or historically have a connection to the Basin, with an emphasis on making sure the restoration process will both protect natural resources and guide programs that will improve economic opportunities that better sustains and honors tribal nations' historical and ancestral ties to the land and water.

Before his current role, Jordan worked as the communications director for the Healing Our Waters - Great Lakes Coalition. Jordan's professional history includes being a journalist and editor for community newspapers, a marketing and development leader for the Toledo Jazz Society, and overseeing media relations for a nonpartisan public engagement effort based in Washington, D.C. Jordan obtained a degree in English from Case Western Reserve University and engages in the craft of storytelling and community-engagement through everything he does.

Join us in Owensboro for the 2025 KAEE Conference and be part of a growing movement to advance environmental education across Kentucky and beyond. Registration opens soon!

Learn more at kaee.org/conference.