Caitlin Sternberg has been named Director of Outreach and Communication at Citizens for a Safe & Clean Lake Superior. (Courtesy photo)

MARQUETTE — Citizens for a Safe & Clean Lake Superior, a Marquette County nonprofit, welcomes a new staff member, Caitlin Sternberg, as Director of Outreach and Communication. Sternberg, who graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2021 from NMU with an Environmental Science degree, “has the experience, talent, youthful energy and vision to help us raise awareness and unite our community to defeat the proposed heavy industrial rocket launch site near Lake Superior’s shoreline at Granot Loma,” said CSCLS President, Dennis Ferraro.

She previously worked as a Great Lakes Climate Corp crew leader with the Superior Watershed Partnership, partnering with diverse groups like the National Forest Service or the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on environmental projects, and she also worked as a Land Steward with the Rocky Mt. Conservancy in Colorado. These are examples of her organizational and leadership skills, according to Ferraro.

After growing up in a Chicago neighborhood where jets from O’Hare airport boomed overhead, Sternberg says that “living near Lake Superior has reframed my world views and values”, and that in addition to the strong connection that she feels to the Lake and surrounding habitat, she is “also impressed by the connection people in Marquette County have to each other, and to the environment,” she said in an announcement.

Commenting on the rocket launch plan, Sternberg said she views this type of “needless industrialization of our Lake Shore as an environmental and community threat” that will need to be guarded against “even after the rocket launch plan is defeated.”

In addition to engaging people at community events, developing ties with community members, and involving volunteers to help with CSCLS’ mission, she hopes to also expand participation of local university and high school students, whom she sees as “very environmentally oriented,” she said.

Ferraro noted that “you will also be seeing a lot of Cait not only here in Marquette, but also at events with people in Powell Township, who have been such good environmental stewards in maintaining the wonderful natural landscape that we all enjoy.”