By Gitte Laasby
Post-Tribune
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) -- For a woman who started her career working in billboard advertising in Chicago, it may seem like an odd transition to lead an environmental organization. For Nicole Kamins, it's quite the opposite.
"It's about being true to myself, true to the environment and doing the best I can for this world in the short time we have here," she said.
As the new executive director for Save the Dunes, Kamins is finding herself closer to her hippie-like roots than her high-paced "city girl" lifestyle in Chicago, where she often felt detached and dispassionate about her work.
Kamins, 39, grew up with a liberal activist mom in a house often used for fundraisers and a front yard lined with signs promoting women's causes.
On Friday nights, the family visited her grandmother and great-aunt in Porter Beach. Kamins fondly remembers attending summer camps where she cooked, ate and fell asleep outside listening to the birds and the wind in the trees.
"As a child, you don't know you have a connection for something, but you feel it in your soul," she said. "There's something to be said for spending all your days and nights outside. It permeates your soul. It makes you feel so relaxed."
Kamins' love and commitment to nature showed this August when she married Steve Barker, an ecological resource specialist for the restoration company JFNew, on the beach of Beverly Shores. The reception featured locally grown food, a passion they share.
Barker and Kamins met repeatedly at environmental conferences and other work events. It fascinated him to hear her speak and he eventually worked up the courage to ask her out. "Her personality, the way she relates to people, you get drawn in," he said. "Her intellect is very profound. She gets these complicated issues very well. She can look at the big picture and find a way forth on these issues."
He said Kamins knows how to transcend demographics and make people relate to issues -- two useful skills for her new position.
Barker (who, coincidentally, shares the name of the Barker House, the Save the Dunes' Michigan City headquarters where Kamins now works) considers it his job to introduce Kamins to the gems of Northwest Indiana. He started by making her go paddling -- a hobby that fits well with her other favorite outdoor activities, hiking and running.
Despite her natural immersion into Northwest Indiana's environment, Kamins has retained at least a couple of her city habits, one of which is wearing stylish outfits. On this day, she sported a lavender cardigan meticulously matched with a skirt and necklace. She loves fashion and admits she misses shopping on her way home from work downtown. Barker reportedly shakes his head at her secret mission to find a place in Northwest Indiana that can satisfy her sushi cravings.
It was missing nature that made Kamins branch out from her journalism background and career start in advertising and instead enroll in an environmental studies program.
"It's because of my education and summer camp experience I got into the environment," she said.
Kamins spent the last 11 years operating where nature, industry and community intersect. She worked on the city of Chicago's Calumet Initiative, which has restored 3,800 acres of open space on the city's south side. Many of the properties were contaminated from industrial use. "I think she has a proven track record. She has been very involved with environmental issues in the Calumet area on the Illinois side of the border and she's been involved with restoration problems. She's been involved with brownfields, she's been involved with many different environmental issues," said Jeanette Neagu, president-elect of Save the Dunes. "She's highly impressive. Her ability to articulate the issues, her writing skills. All aspects of who she is are an important part."
Kamins says her previous job gave her plenty of experience working with diverse groups, from governments and not-for-profits to academia, residents and industry. She hopes to use those skills to foster more collaboration on projects and to revive relationships with other environmental groups.
"I'm hoping in Indiana we can do some of the same things. I think we can get a lot more done if we work collaboratively," she said.
Kamins' experience with collaboration and strategic fundraising were part of what appealed to the Save the Dunes board of directors.
"She's detail-oriented, yet I think she sees the big picture, too. Her ability to work with other entities seems outstanding as far as all of us could tell," said interim director Susan MiHalo, secretary of the board. "She's a nice person on top of it all."
Kamins felt fascinated by the passionate struggles of the people who founded Save the Dunes. At the same time, it was overwhelming to arrive at a 58-year-old organization whose veteran members have fought for the environment longer than she has lived. Some cramming was necessary for Kamins to catch up. MiHalo mentored Kamins and trained her during a one-week overlap. "She made a list, A to Z, of projects I needed to be aware of. I filled in two notebooks," Kamins said with a laugh. "A's for advocacy, B's for bank accounts, C's for coal ash ... It's exciting and daunting at the same time." After more than a decade as a government employee, Kamins says she's looking forward to the advocacy part and having the freedom to voice her opinion.
However, with only about 400 members, Save the Dunes has limited funding to fulfill its mission of buying land for preservation in Northwest Indiana, enhancing and protecting biodiversity, protecting the Lake Michigan watershed and educating people by giving them hands-on experience with nature.
Luckily, federal stimulus funding may fill part of that gap. Kamins secured millions of dollars of grant funding for projects while with the city of Chicago. As a part of Save the Dunes, she says she'll work to secure stimulus funding for Northwest Indiana and create some legacies with it. "The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative was intended to be short-term funding," she said. "We know this is once-in-a-lifetime money ... The second round is coming and we want to be prepared."
As part of Save the Dunes' mission to expand and protect the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Kamins also hopes to work closely with the National Park Service.
But most of all, she's happy to put her energy into an organization whose goal is to preserve the dunes and the environment where she spent part of her childhood.
"There's something to be said for an organization that's trying to get the truth out there and to help people, that's encouraging residents to become involved in issues they can impact in a positive way for the region," she said.
Published: Thu, Nov 4, 2010
