Laurie Rink is a practicing ecologist currently working out of Denver, Colorado.  She began her career early in life, collecting snails from the small kettle wetland outside her bedroom window (northern Illinois), in hopes that mom would make escargot for dinner.  As an older ecologist, she earned a double degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1984 in Environmental, Populational, Organismic Biology and Environmental Conservation.  She continued thereafter with graduate degree studies in biology and engineering. Ms. Rink is certified as a professional wetland scientist through the Society of Wetland Scientists program.

She co-owned and operated a design/build environmental restoration firm for the first 12 years of her career.  She moved on in 1999 to form the state’s first company devoted to the mission of mitigation and conservation banking.  Her firm has since built and is operating a wetland mitigation bank in Adams County.

Ms. Rink also provides regulatory-based water quality consulting services to the Farmer’s Reservoir and Irrigation Company and the Burlington Reservoir and Land Company.  She manages the water quality program in the Barr and Milton Divisions, which provides infrastructure and drinking water for 250,000 people in the Denver metropolitan area and irrigation water for 60,000 acres of farmland across 3,000 square miles along the Front Range between Denver and Greeley.