Leadership
WaterRising Institute is a 501(c)(3) with UN ECOSOC Special Consultative Status, founded in response to the Flint Water Crisis. Chaired by Gary LaDrido, Chairman of the Board, alongside Founder & CEO Alicia Douglas, its board and advisors bring together infrastructure leaders, family offices, policymakers, technologists, scientists, and creatives to advance the future value of water.
Mission
WaterRising Institute builds the ecosystem that advances water through leadership, research, strategic partnerships, and innovation. We bring together the public, private, philanthropic, and civic sectors to make water more visible, strengthen resilience, and accelerate solutions that create lasting economic, environmental, and social impact.
Vision
A world where water is recognized as the foundation of healthy communities, resilient economies, and a sustained future. WaterRising Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Board of Directors
Chairman of the Board, WaterRising Institute + WaterHouse. Read more →
LinkedInFounder & CEO, WaterRising Institute + WaterHouse.
LinkedInBoard of Advisors
Spanning infrastructure, finance, science, policy, technology, and culture.
Organizational Evolution · 2017–Present
WaterRising was founded on the premise that persistent water failures — like Flint — were not single breakdowns, but systemic misalignment between policy, technology, capital, and community. Each phase revealed what the next required.
Founded as a neutral intermediary, not an advocacy group. Backed by the Wege Foundation through the Aspen Institute, WaterRising convened non-disclosed, invitation-only meetings alongside UNGA, WEF, and World Water Week — building trust and capital pattern recognition. The DRAWQ Detroit River AI water-quality pilot was fully designed and partner-aligned before COVID halted deployment, revealing a decisive insight: the binding constraint was human and institutional capacity, not technology.
WaterRising reframed "infrastructure" to include the people who determine whether systems function — operators, engineers, executives, regulators. Workforce readiness emerged as the structural capacity solution, addressing talent shortages and institutional continuity in alignment with utilities and international workforce frameworks.
A formal platform to make leadership capacity visible, senior, and investable. Supported by SUEZ, Xylem, Kohler, Heineken, and the Wege Foundation, it elevated the leaders already running systems. The insight: capital does not move toward potential alone — it follows visible, credible leadership.
The institutional response to everything learned since 2017: trust must precede capital, leadership must precede technology, and workforce readiness must precede investment. WaterHouse functions as a curated policy–market–capital hub, embedding workforce and leadership directly into infrastructure finance. In 2024, WaterRising's role as a sub-recipient on a U.S. EPA workforce-development grant validated its capacity as a delivery partner. WaterHouse is not a departure from the early work — it is the institutional container for everything that work revealed.
Contact
To become a Founding Builder of WaterHouse, or to begin a conversation with our founder, reach the team directly.
Founder & CEO, WaterRising Institute + WaterHouse
adouglas@waterrisinginstitute.org
thewaterrisinginstitute.org
WaterRising Institute · 501(c)(3) Nonprofit · UN ECOSOC Special Consultative Status under UN Water · Flint, Michigan · Founded in response to the Flint Water Crisis · Make the Invisible Visible™
