North Stars: How Josephine Roberts is Protecting Walloon Lake & the World

Josephine Roberts is helping to preserve Walloon Lake—and the world—through her work at Adventure Scientists.

This article first appeared in Traverse Northern Michigan. Find this story and more when you explore our magazine library. Want Traverse delivered to your door or inbox monthly? View our print subscription and digital subscription options.

Before Josephine Roberts interviewed with the Walloon Lake Association and Conservancy (WLAC), the consummate nonprofit professional admits that she had to Google, “What is a watershed?”

“I didn’t have a conservation background, obviously,” Roberts laughs. But that didn’t stop her from landing the position—and making a noteworthy impact.

While her land trust knowledge may have needed a bit of bolstering in the beginning of her tenure, Roberts brought a wealth of experience to the job. “I’d worked in basically every single role in a nonprofit in my fifteen-year career,” she says. When Roberts saw the job posting for an executive director role at Walloon Lake, a mix of personal connection and nostalgia inspired her to apply. “I’d gone to Camp Daggett as a kid, and I’m from East Jordan,” she says. “I thought the job would bring me back home to Northern Michigan.”

Photo by Courtney Kent

Roberts’ skills in nonprofit management and a fundraising background served Walloon Lake and its surrounding natural resources well. In just three years, she catapulted the organization’s annual budget from $250,000 to an impressive $1 million. And in 2020, with Roberts at the helm, WLAC was able to achieve an ambitious land acquisition project that required her to negotiate for 90 acres of priceless shoreline property—a task that required finesse and diplomacy. “Land is like gold here,” she says. “So, when you talk about leaving a legacy through land, people are hesitant to let that legacy go.”

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As a woman of color in a field dominated by white males (in 2021, Roberts says, she was one of only three female Asian executive directors in land trust organizations in the country), growing up as an Asian American woman helped strengthen her cultural proficiency, a huge asset when it comes to navigating projects in the conservation space.

“Being able to talk to everyone, from farmers and high-net-worth donors, to landowners on the lake and the sheriff ’s department, to people who are just trying to live in our community and send their kids to school—it’s all a big part of getting these projects done,” she explains.

Photo by Courtney Kent

While Roberts has recently begun a new role as head of development of Adventure Scientists, a global conservation organization, she’s staying put in Northern Michigan. “It’s home,” she says, and she sees connections between her new job and the work she did for Walloon Lake.

For example, Roberts references a citizen science program she oversaw, training volunteers to monitor salamanders who lay their eggs in vernal pools and then submit their findings to a larger database that tracks climate-change patterns.

As Roberts learned, that small-scale project is very similar to the kind of data collection happening globally in shoreline restoration projects.

As for her work Up North? In a nod to her early years as a camper on Walloon Lake, Roberts will step into the role of board president of Camp Daggett in 2024, leading up to its centennial in 2025. It will be the first time in the organization’s history that Camp Daggett will have both a female board president and female executive director.

As the mother of two “very outdoorsy” kids, it seems only fitting that Roberts will be lending her professional expertise to the same camp that helped her fall in love with Northern Michigan’s outdoors—and helping to nurture that same love in a new generation.

Meet All 5 North Stars of 2024

These women are connecting the dots, bending the norms and lighting the road ahead. Get the March issue of Traverse Northern Michigan magazine to view our North Stars feature in celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, or view all 5 stories on MyNorth.com in March.

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