Mark Schleifstein to receive Lifetime Achievement Award from CRCL

Other award recipients include Theresa Schmidt, Brother Martin, Sandy Nguyen

August 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Longtime journalist Mark Schleifstein, who retired last year from The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate | NOLA.com, is the recipient of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, joining previous recipients including Steve Cochran, R. King Milling and Bob Marshall. Schleifstein and other CRCL award recipients will be honored November 13 at SoLou restaurant in Baton Rouge.

Schleifstein began working as a reporter for The Times-Picayune in 1984, four years before CRCL was founded. His reporting on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath was among the paper’s work cited specifically in the two Pulitzer Prizes the paper received in 2006. He also wrote for the paper’s “Oceans of Trouble” series that won the 1997 Pulitzer for Public Service. He has received other awards from organizations including the National Association of Science Writers, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the U.S. Water Alliance, the Press Club of New Orleans and the National Academy of Sciences.

“For more than four decades, Mark has been the voice helping Louisiana make sense of the challenges and possibilities for our coast,” said Kim Reyher, executive director at CRCL. “He has helped us all recognize and understand our coastal land loss crisis. His work has placed restoration at the center of our state’s story — and his legacy will endure for generations.”  

Gordon Russell, a longtime colleague of Schleifstein’s who now works for The Boston Globe, wrote in nomination materials that “without his reporting at The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, it’s hard to imagine where coastal preservation and restoration would rank among Louisiana’s problems.”   

CRCL is also presenting six Coastal Stewardship Awards. Winners of those awards are:

• Dr. Jelagat Cheruiyot, a professor at Tulane University who has inspired hundreds of students to work in coastal restoration and has spearheaded several restoration and stormwater management projects; 

• Brother Martin, a New Orleans high school whose students participate in an interdisciplinary lesson on coastal issues that has included studying the state’s Coastal Master Plan and logging more than a thousand volunteer hours working on CRCL’s restoration projects;

• Sandy Nguyen, the executive director of Coastal Communities Consulting, who for more than two decades has provided technical assistance, business support and capacity building to commercial fishers, shrimpers and oyster harvesters in southeast Louisiana; 

• Anne Milling, who founded Women of the Storm, a nonpartisan, nonpolitical alliance that drew attention to the needs of a post-Katrina New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and to coastal restoration more broadly;   

• Theresa Schmidt, who retired this year after 47 years as a journalist at KPLC in Lake Charles; a letter of support says “none of the other reporters along the Chenier Plain Coast have been as steadfast and as personally aware of our fragile natural ecosystem and its values”; 

• Dominique Seibert, the Louisiana SeaGrant agent for St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes who works to promote stewardship of the state’s coastal resources through a combination of research, education and outreach programs. 

People and organizations are nominated by the public for CRCL Coastal Stewardship Awards and the Lifetime Achievement Award. The winners are selected by a committee comprised of Louisiana residents from across the coast. The selection process is confidential.  

CRCL also annually presents awards for Emerging Steward, Volunteer of the Year and Friend of CRCL. Those winners are selected by the nonprofit’s staff. They are: 

• Ezra Horwitz, Emerging Steward, who raised funds for CRCL as a school project and for his mitzvah project and who participated in an oyster reef build at Grand Bayou;  

• Trent Gremillion, Volunteer of the Year, who has been to countless volunteer events since November 2024 and who has freely shared his species identification expertise;  

• CITGO, a longtime restoration partner of CRCL that has made possible the organization’s recent Southwest Louisiana Coastal Restoration Roadshow that helps residents propose restoration project ideas and CRCL’s new Coastal Leadership Institute  

Additionally, former CRCL Board Chairman John Morello is being recognized for distinguished stewardship. Morello helped usher in the digital age at CRCL, providing pro bono IT services for years. 

The CRCL Coastal Stewardship Awards have been presented annually since 1996. Tickets for the awards night can be purchased online. Sponsors of the awards include Colonial Pipeline Co. and Aptim. Additional sponsorships are still available.  

CRCL was Louisiana’s first statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to coastal restoration. While CRCL has evolved over the years, growing from a small policy shop to a multifaceted organization with expertise in policy, science, outreach and on-the-ground restoration, the coalition-building character of the organization has remained central. The organization runs the state’s only large-scale Oyster Shell Recycling Program. Through its Native Plants Program, it has planted more than a million trees and plants across coastal Louisiana. The organization also educates students through its Future Coastal Leaders Program and trains professionals through its Coastal Leadership Institute.  

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The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to unite people in action to achieve a thriving, sustainable Louisiana coast for all.