The Bob Graham Center for Public Service provides a wide variety of programs for students and the larger public on topics related to public service, public leadership and civic engagement.
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Careers in Public Service: Conservation Conversation
October 18, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
***Registration for this event has reached capacity and is now closed. Please join us at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 18 for a public program with Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch. Visit our website for more information.***
UF students are cordially invited to a lunchtime conversation with UF graduate Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch on Tuesday, October 18 at noon in the O’Neill Reading Room (2nd floor, Pugh Hall).
About Our Speaker
Jacqui, a water advocate and South Florida Water Management District Governing Board member, is a former teacher, Sewall’s Point town commissioner, mayor and longtime advocate and historian for the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon.
In 2013 she and her husband began taking aerial photographs from their “River Warrior” Legend Cub airplane shining light on Lake Okeechobee’s toxic algae blooms destroying the canal connecting the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries. Her advocacy has brought state, national and international attention to the Everglades’ northern estuary clean water crisis and helped drive change.
Jacqui was appointed to the South Florida Water Management District board by Gov. Ron DeSantis when he took office in 2019, and reappointed by the governor this summer. In 2017-2018, she was appointed by Florida’s Senate President to serve on the 2017-2018 Constitution Revision Commission that meets only once every twenty years. She sponsored a bill to ban oil and gas drilling in Florida’s territorial seas that became part of Amendment 9, approved by 68% of Florida voters in 2018.
Throughout her career, Jacqui has served on multiple environmental boards and organizations, chairing the Florida League of Cities Energy, Environmental, and Natural Resources Legislative Committee, and serving on the board of the Rivers Coalition. She helped found the youth advocacy group River Kidz.
Jacqui graduated from the University of Florida with dual bachelor’s degrees in journalism and German, and later earned her master’s in education from the University of West Florida while teaching in Pensacola High School’s International Baccalaureate Program.