Mark Schleifstein
Longtime journalist Mark Schleifstein, who retired in 2024 from The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate | NOLA.com, will receive CRCL’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. His career began in 1984, four years before CRCL’s founding, and has been dedicated to reporting on Louisiana’s environment and coastal challenges. His work has been recognized with multiple Pulitzer Prizes, including for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the “Oceans of Trouble” series.

“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, CRCL executive director.

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”; 

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;   

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; 

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;  

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. 

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, Friend of CRCL – 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.

John Morello, Distinguished Stewardship – Former CRCL Board Chairman, honored for ushering the organization into the digital age and providing years of pro bono IT support.