… The Water Leadership Institute in northern Arizona (WLI) is an initiative in partnership with three organizations: the Water Society and Policy Lab at NAU, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Arizona Water for All (AW4A) initiative at Arizona State University. Lucero Radonic, professor in the Department of Anthropology and head of the Water, Society and Policy Research Lab, said the WLI started in California in 2013 and was later adapted for southern Arizona in 2024, where it is coordinated by EDF and local partners. Building on the success and momentum of that inaugural Arizona cohort, they began exploring the possibility of piloting a WLI for the Colorado Plateau, a unique ecological region spanning northern Arizona, southern Utah, southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico.