Gulf Coast Institute Staff

dave spratt

Dave Spratt is IJNR's CEO. For more than 20 years, Dave was a fixture at daily newspapers in Colorado and Michigan, writing and editing sports, features and news, nurturing young writers and staring longingly out the window where the real action was. Dave left inky fingers behind in 2009, when he took a buyout from the Detroit News to freelance and carry coolers for IJNR until being named CEO in January 2013. Dave is a lifelong lover of the outdoors and frequent end user of clean air, clear water and healthy habitat — human and otherwise. Easily distracted by wildlife, Dave lives just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife Sarah, a neurotic terrier named Lily, and a laid-back pit bull named Flo, who all eagerly await the next visit home from their college-going daughters Emma and Natalie.

adam hinterthuer

Adam Hinterthuer is an Associate Director at IJNR, focused mostly on programming, which means he spends months lining up speakers, scouting locations and noodling topics in between programs, and days fretting about meeting schedules, herding cats and finding coffee. Adam also serves as outreach and communications specialist for the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Limnology (the study of lakes, more or less) where he gets paid to go out on boats and write about it. Adam lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife, Carrie, and their two daughters, Brynn and Maggie. He's striving to raise tomboy princesses, teaching his girls to build a campfire and catch a fish, while also willingly participating in tea parties and the construction of fairy houses. Adam received his master's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and has a bachelor's degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. While he undoubtedly peaked before he had kids, he hasn't completely given up his freelance writing career, and sometimes succumbs to lapses in judgement, taking gigs for various science and environmental publications.