The 2006 Conference speaker, Chad Pregracke Chad Pregracke grew up just a few feet from the Mississippi River in the Illinois Quad Cities. He began a quest to clean trash off of the River's shorelines in 1997, and in 1998 he founded Living Lands & Waters, the nonprofit environmental organization based in East Moline, Illinois. Living Lands & Waters is committed to the beautification and restoration of our land's rivers. Thousands of volunteers help annually with the community river cleanups, Riverbottom Forest Restoration and Adopt-a-Mississippi River Mile program. Chad has received national and international recognition from the media and has won numerous awards, perhaps his most distinguished, the Jefferson Award in 2002 equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize for public service. Other recipients of the Jefferson award were Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Lilly Tartikoff. Chad's project has been filmed by many of the major networks and featured in numerous national and international magazines including, Smithsonian, Philanthropy, Readers Digest, Outside Magazine, Biography, Field & Stream, LIFE, People, TIME, and USA Today. As the founder of American's only "industrial strength" river clean-up organization, Chad tells a compelling and funny story about how his river experiences led to his unique vision to clean up the Mississippi River and how one person truly can make a difference. Click here for an extended profile on Chad Pregracke and his Living Lands & Waters project. Click here to return to the coverage of the 2006 Conference. Site design by